Law Commons^™

Advantaging Aggressors: Justice & Deterrence In International Law, Paul H. Robinson, Adil Ahmad Haque

All Faculty Scholarship

Current international law imposes limitations on the use of force to defend against unlawful aggression that improperly advantage unlawful aggressors and disadvantage their victims. The Article gives examples of such rules, governing a variety of situations, showing how clearly unjust they can be. No domestic criminal law system would tolerate their use.

There are good practical reasons why international law should care that its rules are perceived as unjust. Given the lack of an effective international law enforcement mechanism, compliance depends to a large degree upon the moral authority with which international law speaks. Compliance is less likely when its …

Defending Imminence: From Battered Women To Iraq, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan

All Faculty Scholarship

The war against Iraq and nonconfrontational killings by battered women are two recent examples of a more general theoretical problem. The underlying question is when may a defender act in self-defense. While some nineteenth century common law cases vested the rights in the defender, arguing that it was unfair to force her to live in fear, contemporary domestic and international law cast the balance decidedly on the side of the aggressor, by forcing the defender to wait until the aggressor's attack is imminent. The Bush Administration and the battered woman simply ask whether the pendulum swung too far in the …