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Search: unwilling or unable

08 Nov

...territory of an American State, through the trespassing of boundaries (…)”, without nuance or exceptions. At the end of the day, therefore, saying that Article 51 is “clearly of Latin American origin” means accepting it is simultaneously a landmark for international law in general, but also just another episode of Latin America’s centuries-old history of anti-interventionism; a history deeply rooted in opposition to one state invading another under the Corollary’s excuse of “chronic wrongdoing or impotence” – or, as we might just as well call it, being “unwilling or unable”....
08.11.19 | |

29 Sep

...Jokowi era, and under President Prabowo there is little indication of impartial or independent review. Where the state itself is both the perpetrator and unwilling to provide remedies, international law provides the several framework for accountability. This framework rests on Indonesia’s binding treaty commitments and the monitoring bodies empowered to review state compliance, investigate violations, and issue authoritative findings. Civil society therefore has several mechanisms available at the international level. Immediate action can include submissions to UN Special Procedures, including to the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. Similar communications can...
29.09.25 | |

16 Jul

[Ozan Varol is Assistant Professor of Law at Lewis & Clark Law School.] Since the Egyptian military ousted President Mohamed Morsi, various commentators have pondered whether the military’s actions fit within the framework I described in an article titled The Democratic Coup d’Etat, published last summer in the Harvard International Law Journal (see here, here, here, here, and here). In this post, I will discuss whether Morsi’s ouster was a coup—the United States remains unwilling to use the magic word—and if so, whether it constitutes a “democratic coup.” I will...
16.07.13 | |

20 May

...children’s safety than on their return. Consequently, we decline to impose on a responding parent a duty to prove that her child’s country of habitual residence is unable or unwilling to ameliorate the grave risk of harm which would otherwise accompany the child’s return. My gut reaction is that the Eleventh Circuit reached the correct result. Given the choice of returning the child to their home of habitual residence to be cared for by the state, versus the option of allowing the child to live with the mother in another...
20.05.08 | |

13 May

...to the customs and usages of their own country,” unwilling or unable “to assimilate with our people or to make any change in their habits or modes of living.” Kobayashi points to Japanese-Americans’ asserted inability to “assimilat[e] as an integral part of the white population.” And though lots of folks were more sanguine about European assimilation, you see the same sentiment in connection with the enactment of the restrictionist sentiment of the 1920s. A 1924 newspaper editorial, thus, explained that restricting immigration was desirable precisely because it would “result in...
13.05.08 | |

24 Mar

Jennifer Trahan and Megan Fairlie kicked off the week with an analysis of the US’s latest attack on the International Criminal Court, in which they highlighted the doctrinal and practical problems associated with US’s threat to implement, inter alia, a travel ban on ICC officials investigating mass atrocity crimes which allegedly occurred in Afghanistan. Kevin continued with an historical analysis of the earliest invocation of the “unwilling or unable” justification for self-defense proffered by the Nixon Administration for the armed attacks on Cambodia during the Vietnam War, which generated considerable...
24.03.19 | |

17 Jun

...“blunder[ed] in” behind a posture of “faux deference” to hide its “inflated notion of judicial supremacy.” Slip Op. 5 n.1, 6, 17. In one sense the dissenters’ rhetoric is fairly standard stuff, albeit unbecomingly vitriolic. But there’s an issue here that goes beyond mere rhetoric: I think in this case the dissenters may actually misunderstand the majority’s conception of how deference ought to work. It’s true that the Court is unwilling to defer to the political branches’ categorical elimination of a fundamental liberty right, particularly one which it describes, as...
17.06.08 | |

18 Aug

...involved, creating a ‘problem of many hands’. This situation is exacerbated because the state, the one organisation which is expected to provide a backstop to guarantee that its citizens are not harmed, is often unwilling or unable to hold anyone else to account. In some cases, particularly in regards to the eviction of individuals, and allowing construction in environmentally-sensitive areas, the government is actually complicit in the harm. Thus, with an absent state, my research examines how the international sporting organisations should be accountable, and should hold others to account,...
18.08.15 | |

13 Oct

This week on Opinio Juris, Eric Posner’s Slate article about the legality of US drone strikes in Pakistan attracted the attention of Julian Ku and Kevin Jon Heller. Julian wondered whether Koh’s “conversion” on the issue will serve as a shield against international arguments about the illegality of the strikes. Kevin in turn expressed hope that Posner’s rejection of the “unwilling or unable” test will stop the spread of this standard from the US into non-US opinio juris. Kevin reflected, twice, on how history tends to repeat itself, drawing parallels...
13.10.12 | |

11 Dec

...the United States and the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) would agree to a negotiating mandate sufficiently strong to enable the European Union to agree to an extension of the Kyoto Protocol. Important issues included: Legal form — Some countries were reportedly unwilling to accept a mandate to negotiate a “legally-binding agreement.” (India was most clearly in this camp; the positions of the United States and China were less clear.) Early texts proposed negotiating a “legal framework” or a “legal outcome,” but the European Union, small island...
11.12.11 | |

14 Jul

...the paper mostly addresses itself is whether, in the face of withering international legal criticism, from UN special rapporteurs, human rights groups, academics, etc. – what we might call the international “soft law” crowd – the US, and specifically the Obama administration, will insist on the traditional doctrines of self defense, including against terrorists who find safe haven in states that are unwilling or unable to deal with them. The problem specifically for the Obama administration is that on the one hand it has – correctly in my view, for...
14.07.09 | |

11 Sep

...oppose the Bush policies are fed up with the Administration not just because of the substance of the policy but also because it is utterly unwilling ever to admit error (or, as David Scheffer observes here of last week’s speech, that the President “just doesn’t get it”). Even in the wake of the apparent loss in Hamdan, the Administration bounced right back as if nothing had happened. There is also a prevailing unwillingness on the part of this Administration to engage on the issues. Real debate becomes difficult and name-calling...
11.09.06 | |