Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

[Jens David Ohlin is Associate Professor of Law at Cornell University Law School.] This post is part of our symposium on the latest issue of the Leiden Journal of International Law. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. I agree with almost everything in Darryl Robinson’s plea for a cosmopolitan liberal approach to international criminal justice. Robinson’s article sketches out the development of ICL scholarship, noting the beginnings of the field, followed by the liberal critique of early ICL development, and then the counter-critique...

...and current overview of treaty law and practice for academics and practitioners alike. It combines 25 chapters on all the basic issues that arise in treaty-making, (including formation, application, interpretation and exit) with a survey of common treaty clauses, including 350 examples from existing treaties. The book is due in print this summer, but feel free to pre-order your copy now. I’m sure I’ll blog about it more in the coming months (as well as a few treaty-related issues I picked up along the way). For now, however, I’d love...

I know we will be having a discussion of Tom Farer’s book on a grand liberal strategy for dealing with terrorism down the road, but I wanted to note that the general issue of ‘grand strategy’ is at the heart of Philip Bobbitt’s new book, Terror and Consent. It has deservedly been widely reviewed and highly praised – Ferguson in the New York Times Book Review, for example – “the most profound book on the subject of American foreign policy since the attacks of 9/11 – indeed since the end...

...Begg's book: "It'll all be over one day," in the London Review of Books, Vol. 28, No. 11 (8 June 2006), 10-12. Seamus 'I think it would behoove everyone who fairly wrestles with these questions to admit that there is no easy or simple answer here.' The Bush administration appears to have found an easy answer to at least one question, to wit: UPDATE: Pentagon Orders U.S. Reporters to Exit Guantanamo Please see stories in EDITOR & PUBLISHER (link at TalkLeft), Los Angeles Times, etc. Seamus Regarding the expression 'the...

...unableness of the Pakistani government to address that threat? For what it’s worth, the AfPak terminology seems to be on the rise again. In the case of the targeted killings outside Afghanistan, it must be heartbreaking for Mr Koh to see proper legal justifications give way to political expediency. Chris Rogers So Koh's response is essentially to cut and paste his ASIL speech? There are important legal questions that continue to be unanswered, which Koh's response has done nothing to clarify. Oddly, he says nothing about the legal grounds for...

[Col. (Ret.) Pnina Sharvit Baruch is a Former Head of the International Law Department of the IDF Military Advocate General’s Office] This is the fourth response in our Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation. Earlier posts can be found in the Related Links at the end of this post. I am grateful for the opportunity to respond in brief to some of the points made in the excellent contributions of fellow bloggers. At the outset, as a former practitioner, I admit that I prefer functional approaches...

Mihai Martoiu Ticu "Calls on all States to work together urgently to bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of these terrorist attacks and stresses that those responsible for aiding, supporting or harbouring the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of these acts will be held accountable;" I wonder what the resolution means by bringing to justice? Is it justice of the John Wayne type or a real court with real judges? Liz There has to be a means to bring suspects to that "real court" with "real judges". They don't...

...prong. This is why it has been long considered by both the Bush and Obama administrations to be covert action, not TMA. If the covert-action statute is capable of conferring the benefits of the public-authority justification, then, it does so here. I think this response elides the difference between two different situations: (1) where the military wants to use force covertly against al-Qaeda; and (2) where the CIA wants to use force covertly against al-Qaeda. As Bobby’s article brilliantly explains, the TMA language was included in Title 50 because neither...

My friend Dapo Akande takes me to task today at EJIL: Talk! for my position on drone strikes directed at combatants attending a funeral or helping the wounded. I will address his curious reluctance to address the text of the Rome Statute in Part II of my response; in this post, I want to address his arguments concerning IHL. Here are the key paragraphs: First of all, Article 51(2) which prohibits attacks on the civilian population and individual civilians does not simply prohibits attacks but rather makes it illegal to...

...so while anticipating and preparing for armed resistance from the host/target state. And host/target states which have not granted permission for others to use force on their territory will assert a right to defend their sovereignty by treating such uses of force as aggression, and by responding with force if they so choose. The host/target state’s response, though theoretically unlawful, is very likely to occur and is something that any state relying upon the “unable or unwilling” standard will both anticipate and factor in to its decision to use force....

Professor Lederman asks in a comment to Professor Kent’s post if we could clarify our disagreement on the President’s power to respond to attacks. Briefly, here is how I understand it. I think both of us agree: (1) That Congress has the ultimate control over the U.S. response to an attack, in that it can limit the response by statute, or simply refuse to approve funding for certain kinds of responses; and (2) That in the absence of statutory approval the President can “repel sudden attacks” (as Madison said at...

who hold the greatest responsibility for setting policies of state violence and repression –a trend already underway in international, hybrid and national tribunals. However, these criminal law mechanisms at least do not force societies to confront the all or nothing option of trials v. total forgetting for the sake of political expediency. Instead, a flexible criminal justice process emerges that upholds the primacy of accountability, important for building the rule of law and meeting the justice demands of victims-survivors. On this last point, I believe that Slye and I concur....