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The Worldwide Popular Revolt Against Proportionality In Self-Defense Law, Renée Lettow Lerner
The Worldwide Popular Revolt Against Proportionality In Self-Defense Law, Renée Lettow Lerner
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This article examines popular dissatisfaction with the proportionality standard in self-defense law, which holds that the prevention of harm cannot be achieved by causing harm that is disproportionate. Legal elites, such as prosecutors, judges, and legal scholars, have long championed versions of this standard. But there is an increasingly widespread movement in the United States and Europe to modify elite notions of proportionality.
Common to these movements is the desire to replace complicated balancing tests with clearer rules, which would limit the discretion of prosecutors and judges, and to permit use of deadly force against attackers in more situations. Fueling …
How The United States Might Justify A Preemptive Strike On A Rogue Nation's Nuclear Weapon Development Facilities Under The U.N. Charter, Gregory E. Maggs
How The United States Might Justify A Preemptive Strike On A Rogue Nation's Nuclear Weapon Development Facilities Under The U.N. Charter, Gregory E. Maggs
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This essay addresses a legal question: "Under the United Nations Charter, how might the United States justify a preemptive strike on a rogue nation's nuclear weapon development facilities?" The essay answers this question by arguing that the United States would not have to rely on controversial theories like "self-defense in response to an imminent attack" or "anticipatory self-defense." On the contrary, as this essay demonstrates with numerous recent and widely-publicized examples, the nations that the United States most likely would strike, Iran and North Korea, constantly are engaging in conventional armed attacks and other aggression against allies of the United …