Law Commons^™

Complexity Theory And The Horizontal And Vertical Dimensions Of State Responsibility, Mark A. Chinen

Mark A. Chinen

In this Article I argue along with other commentators that a gap that has always existed in the law of state responsibility is now becoming more evident, namely the one that exists between a state and its citizens, making it difficult to justify why state responsibility should be distributed to those citizens. If for example a state agrees at the international level to undertake domestic austerity measures, why should its citizens bear the costs of such measures, especially when the same state is obligated under international law to protect those citizens’ human rights?

I use concepts taken from complexity theory …

Crumbs From The Table: The Syrophoenician Woman And International Law, Mark Chinen

Mark A. Chinen

International law has been criticized, not just for its formal incoherence, but for its alleged complicity in the exclusion of large numbers of people from the benefits and processes of the international system. In this Article I consider a story from the New Testament for what it might say about those critiques. A woman of Syrophoenician origin, whose daughter is possessed by an evil spirit, asks Jesus for help. Jesus protests, “First let the children eat all they want, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.” The woman replies, “Yes, Lord, …

Crumbs From The Table: The Syrophoenician Woman And International Law, Mark Chinen

Mark A. Chinen

In this Article I consider a story from the New Testament for what it might say to international law. A woman of Syrophoenician origin, whose daughter is possessed by an evil spirit, asks Jesus for help. Jesus protests, “First let the children eat all they want, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.” The woman replies, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Jesus is impressed by this reply and tells the woman her daughter is well. The way in which the story unfolds is …

Secrecy And Democratic Decisions, Mark A. Chinen

Mark A. Chinen

Secrecy to protect intelligence sources and methods appears often in the nation’s discourse about controversial national security matters. Often it is asked whether such secrecy is consistent with the nation’s democratic principles and processes. I argue such principles and processes provide a framework through which we try to answer questions about secrecy and indeed legitimate them, but are often too broad to provide definitive guidance in specific cases. At the same time, the sources and methods argument itself is overbroad because of the nature of the sources and methods themselves; the tentative nature of intelligence assessments derived from those sources …