The Right to Self-Defence in National and International Law: The Role of the Imminence Requirement

This article explores the doctrine of self-defence within the context of the challenges directed at the imminence requirement, from the perspective of both national and international law. The article will attempt to illustrate that the requirement of imminence underlines the political character of the self-defence doctrine wherein private force may only be resorted to in the absence of institutional protection. This study will argue that the imminence rule can not merely be regarded as a "proxy" for establishing necessity; rather, the elements of imminence, necessity, and proportionality are inextricably connected to ensure that defensive force is only resorted to when national or international authorities are not in a position to prevent an illegal aggression, and that the defensive lethal force is not abused.

Hidden Contradictions and Conditionality: Conceptualisations of Inclusive Education in International Law

The nature of education that children with disabilities should receive has been subject to much debate. This article critically assesses the ways in which the international human rights framework has conceptualised ‘inclusive education’. It argues that the right to education for children with disabilities in international law is constitutive of hidden contradictions and conditionality. This is most evident with respect to conceptualisations of ‘inclusion’ and ‘support’, and their respective emphases upon the extent of individual impairment or ‘deficit’ rather than upon the extent of institutional or structural deficit. It is vital that the new Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities pays close attention to the utilisation of these concepts lest the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities further legitimises the ‘special needs’ educational discourse to which children with disabilities have been subject.

Towards an Emancipatory International Law: the Bolivarian reconstruction

In this article, we argue that a unique South American treaty known as ALBA—the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas—puts forward a cohesive counter-vision of international law rooted in notions of complementarity and human solidarity. We further argue that Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) scholars might use this initiative as a springboard to push forward a long-overdue reform of the international legal regime. While, on its own, ALBA is unlikely to pose much of a challenge to the structural imbalances that permeate global society, when juxtaposed alongside the many initiatives of the Bolivarian Revolution, it appears to possess signi?cant democratic potential. With both scholarly and popular support, ALBA may even have the capability of sparking a renewal of a united Third World movement.

ARTICLE: Anarchy and International Law: The Approaches of Hedley Bull and Noam Chomsky

Are anarchy and the law antithetical? Not so, as for more than 350 years international law has governed a legal order based on anarchy; wherein no central authority exists and law functions not on the basis of coercion but on cooperation whereby States must agree to each specific laws before it is bound by its obligations. This article contemplates two manners in which an anarchist might consider international law interesting: first, as a legal system which governs an anarchical society as described by Hedley Bull in line with the English School of International Relations; and second, as a manifestation of a State system which, though illegitimate can be utilized, as Noam Chomsky does, for tactical reasons to demonstrate its inconsistencies and thus weakening the system with the ultimate aim being its implosion

Why do national court judges refer to human rights treaties?: A comparative international law analysis of CEDAW

An analysis was conducted of 325 national judicial decisions across 55 jurisdictions, in which CEDAW was referred to in the reported decision. Despite predictions to the contrary based on previous scholarship, significant variations between courts in their interpretation of CEDAW occurred relatively infrequently, courts referred relatively seldom to interpretations of CEDAW by other national courts, and there was little evidence of transnational dialogic approaches to judging. An analysis of these results suggests that domestic judges invoking CEDAW act primarily as domestic actors who use international law in order to advance domestic goals, rather than acting primarily as agents of the international community in applying CEDAW domestically, or contributing to the transnational shaping of international law to suit national interests. The Article suggests an understanding of the domestic implementation of a human rights treaty as not only law, but a unique kind of law that performs a particular function, in light of its quality as something akin to hard and soft law simultaneously.

The Role of Victims in the International Criminal Tribunals of the Second World War

This article analyses the role of victims within the founding international criminal tribunals of the Second World War, drawing from historical research of the practice and judgements of the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals. While some commentators have decried the absence of victims at Nuremberg and Tokyo, numerous victim-witnesses testified before these tribunals. However, the outcome of these tribunals has been disappointing to victims who still seek justice over sixty-five years later. This article considers the implications of the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals not providing justice to victims and how this has impacted on their legacy. Although these tribunals are neglected in contemporary discussions of victim provisions, they can still provide some important lessons for modern international criminal justice mechanisms, such as the International Criminal Court, to learn from.