Search Results for: 1998-12-17

To date, America’s greatest contribution to the world has been its Constitution. The importance of this document far surpasses such other cultural achievements as the Moon landing, the telephone, GPS, rubber vulcanization, and Henry Ford’s mass production lines. It is more important, even, than Gone With the Wind, and the hamburger — even though this [...]

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The current conflict engulfing Israel and Palestine raises significant issues of international law and policy. This is part one in an anticipated two-part series that will discuss some of the relevant legal questions before the International Criminal Court (ICC; Part I) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ; Part II).  With both courts located in [...]

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“For by wise counsel, thou shalt make thy war.” Proverbs 24:6 Though one might think otherwise, there is no Palestinian state at present, nor has there ever been such a state in the past. Still, once the current Gaza War comes to an end – and whatever the tangible correlates of any war termination agreements [...]

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Following the ruling by the UK’s Supreme Court which found that the government’s Rwanda removal plan for migrants was unlawful, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced his intention to rush through emergency legislation to protect the policy from any further legal challenges. This protection comes under the overarching concept of parliamentary sovereignty. But what is parliamentary [...]

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The Israel-Palestine conflict, which has deep historical, political, and religious roots, has sparked protests worldwide. The conflict has a deep historical ties to the establishment of Israel in 1948 and the displacement of Palestinians. It revolves around competing claims over land, particularly in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Both sides are driven [...]

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President Vahagn Khachaturian signed the Armenian parliament’s decision to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) into law on Sunday, placing the Caucasus country under the Hague-based institution’s jurisdiction despite warnings from its longtime ally Russia. This comes after Armenia stated it was considering ratifying the Rome Statute of the ICC on September 1st. A [...]

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In response to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks against Israeli civilians, Israel mounted Operation Swords of Iron. Although international law allows for certain limited uses of insurgent force, including uses directed toward “self-determination,” these residual allowances do not include any rights of indiscriminate violence or of deliberate attacks on noncombatants. “Revenge,” of course, is [...]

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“The existence of `system’ in the world is obvious to every observer of nature, no matter whom.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (1959)           Whether conspicuous or obscure, terrorism generally presents itself as a systemic challenge. This means, inter alia, that seemingly singular strategic and legal matters may actually be many-sided and interrelated. Regarding legal issues, though [...]

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Abstract: For Israel, core issues surrounding Iran’s still-accelerating nuclear weapons program have been strategic and political, rather than legal. Nonetheless, if Israel should ever decide that it no longer has any reasonable alternative to launching a preemptive attack against certain Iranian military/industrial targets, this defensive first-strike would need to be justified under international law. In [...]

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