Law Commons^™

Why Judy Norman Acted In Reasonable Self-Defense: An Abused Woman And A Sleeping Man, Marina Angel

Marina Angel

The reasonable man has been replaced by the reasonable person, but that person still functions within legal doctrines conceived by men and interpreted to fit the facts of men's lives. To understand why it is sometimes reasonable for an abused woman to kill her abuser while he is asleep or otherwise incapacitated, basic criminal law doctrines do not have to be changed. They do, however, have to be applied to the facts of abused women's lives.

The issue of exit – why didn’t she leave – must be explained. Concepts of time – immediate, imminent, and cyclical – must be …

Preemption By Armed Force Of Trans-Boundry Terrorist Threats: The Russian Perspective, Bakhtiyar R. Tuzmukhamedov

International Law Studies

No abstract provided.

Self-Defense In Asian Religions, David B. Kopel

David B Kopel

This Article investigates the attitudes of six Far Eastern religions - Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Buddhism - towards the legitimacy of the use of force in individual and collective contexts. Self-defense is strongly legitimated in the theory and practice of the major Far Eastern religions. The finding is consistent with natural law theory that some aspects of the human personality, including the self-defense instinct, are inherent in human nature, rather than being entirely determined by culture.

Transnational Terrorist Organizations And The Use Of Force, Daphne Richemond-Barak

Daphne Richemond-Barak

No abstract provided.

The Ban On The Bomb – And Bombing: Iran, The U.S., And The International Law Of Self-Defense, Mary Ellen O'Connell, Maria Alevras-Chenl

Journal Articles

Since the March 2003, U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, rumors have persisted of a United States plan to attack Iran. Some U.S. officials are apparently willing to contemplate the use of military force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Under international law, however, there is no right without Security Council authorization to use significant military force on the territory of another state to stop nuclear research. Knowing this, alternative arguments are being floated by those sympathetic to the plan to attack Iran. One such argument asserts that the U.S. could attack Iran on the basis of collective self-defense with Iraq …

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

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 …

A Constitutional Conundrum Of Second Amendment Commas: A Short Epistolary Report, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Scholarship

Prompted by the court’s decision in Parker v. District of Columbia, this series of correspondence discusses the effect possible forms of punctuation may have on the Second Amendment. The article makes comments on the important grammars during the founding and also two possible writings of the Second Amendment that contain different sets of punctuation.