Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

international law is the product of nation-states cooperating to escape a brutish State of Nature—a result that is not only legally binding but also in each state’s self-interest. I have had the pleasure of reading the book, and it’s tremendous. Many international-law scholars are (understandably) resistant to the caricature of international law presented by the Posners and Yoos of the world, but few have the theoretical chops to engage in the kind of imminent critique of “New Realism” that Jens provides. I hope the book gets the audience it deserves....

As readers will recall, I wrote a short response to Gabriella Blum’s wonderful essay on IHL and common-but-differentiated responsibilities for our inaugural Opinio Juris–Harvard International Law Journal symposium. HILJ has now published my much longer formal response. Here is an overview, from my introduction: Blum’s normative analysis of the desirability of CDRs in IHL is exceptionally powerful, and I agree with most of her conclusions. This brief response, therefore, is intended to be more constructive than critical. In particular, I want to raise five issues that I believe warrant further...

...response here. And in case you are wondering, here is the final paragraph The Spectator refused to run: Only Hilton knows why he felt the need to portray SOAS so unfairly. But his flagrant disregard for the truth seems to indicate that he is more afraid of SOAS’s multiculturalism than he is of its supposed anti-Semitism. For those who long for a whiter, more Judaeo-Christian world, the vibrancy of SOAS can be a scary sight indeed. I hope you’ll read both the original article and my response. Comments most welcome!...

...a poisoned bullet to protect yourself in self-defence? The Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) prohibits the use of certain weapons. Under the Rome Statute and the Australian Commonwealth Criminal Code, it is a war crime to employ poison or poisoned weapons, prohibited gases, or prohibited bullets.In contrast, the law of self-defence does not specifically address the means of response to a threat, but rather merely requires the response to be necessary, reasonable and proportional. Under the Australian Criminal Code and the Rome Statute, there is no limitation on pleading self-defence...

...international criminal justice—creating a historical record of mass atrocities—can make the trials slower and less efficient in terms of reaching outcomes for specific defendants. Professor Ford also finds that the ICTY performed more efficiently than the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), thus challenging a perceived advantage of such hybrid tribunals over ad hoc tribunals like the ICTY. His conclusion suggests the need for future research on comparisons among tribunals within the international criminal justice field, which might have implications from an institutional design perspective. Professor Ford does not address...

and other related areas. TJF’s bloggers are an impressive group including, among others, Mark Drumbl, Christopher Le Mon, William Schabas, and Ruti Teitel. Recent posts have spanned topics including the problems of the Iraqi special tribunal, conflict resolution in Uganda, why East Timor doesn’t want a tribunal, and Morocco’s truth commission. They also have links to full-text versions of transitional justice articles. For anyone interested staying informed on democratization, post-conflict reconstruction, or transitional justice, TJF is a site you will want to check out regularly. (Belated) Welcome to the blogosphere!...

of whether Gaza is occupied. We will post the contributions on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. We will then post responses by the contributors on Thursday. The line-up is as follows: Prof. Aeyal Gross, Tel Aviv University Sari Bashi, Executive Director, Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement Valentina Azarov, Al Quds University Adv. Pnina Sharvit Baruch Dr. Matthew Saul, Durham University Readers will notice that the contributors come from all over the political spectrum. Indeed, what makes this symposium so interesting is that it is not possible to infer a...

of the Court, including the functioning of different stages of proceedings. The Court’s decisions have significant repercussions: on domestic law, criminal theory, and the law of other international courts and tribunals. In this context, the book assesses the extent to which specific approaches and assumptions, both positive and negative, regarding the potential impact of the Court are in need of re-thinking. This book will be essential reading for practitioners, scholars, and students of international criminal law. The book includes my essay on Regulation 55 and an essay on co-perpetration by...

book also offers fresh thinking on related issues, ranging from juvenile justice, to humanitarian interventions, to the universality of human rights, to the role of law in responding to mass atrocity. The book is available both in hardback and paperback. I had the pleasure of reading a couple of chapters while Mark was writing the book, and they were superb. I predict the book — which will no doubt be controversial — will have a profound impact on the way courts, scholars, and activists think about child soldiers. Read Drumbl!...

rules for world trade, efforts to enlist domestic courts to enforce orders of the International Court of Justice, domestic judicial enforcement of the Geneva Convention, the domain of international commercial agreements, and the question of odious debt incurred by sovereigns. This book explains how international law, like contract, depends largely on the willingness of responsible parties to make commitments. Click here to download an order form for the book, which will be available from Cambridge University Press starting in August. This book is going to be a big contribution from...

Thanks to Kevin Heller for his thoughts on the professors’ amicus brief in Doe v. Nestle USA, Inc., and to Opinio Juris for affording me this opportunity to respond. I should say at the outset that I’m making this response only in my personal capacity, not on behalf of any litigant or amicus. While I appreciate the passion Kevin brings to his analysis, I think he lets it carry him a bit beyond the context in which these arguments are being made. To begin, it’s important to appreciate (as I’m...

...completed before my faculty’s $100 a day late fine kicks in … sorry to punt, but I’m not quite sure I want to weigh in with a quick blog post as yet on the topic (okay, this gets a little longer than planned, but it’s not really a response to the report). I will say, though, that Philip’s careful discussion, set against the way in which the State Department frames the issues, is a demonstration once again of the ways in which public international law seems to be increasingly discourses...