This is from Sands. You know, the guy insisting we pay to give away Chagos. On the basis of a court ruling that does not, in law, apply to us nor our relations with Commonwealth countries?
That Sands, squealing about international law.
This is from Sands. You know, the guy insisting we pay to give away Chagos. On the basis of a court ruling that does not, in law, apply to us nor our relations with Commonwealth countries?
That Sands, squealing about international law.
I wonder if the Khmer Rouge had a special punishment for Human Rights lawyers.
The treaties that constitute International Law are just bits of paper that can be argued over by lawyers paid to do so. Those lawyers make a lot of money out of those discussions but they are still bits of paper that can be torn up on a whim. Real law requires enforcement as well as judicial process.
Exactly. There is no such thing as “international law” as there isn’t a legal body that has actual jurisdiction over all the individual sovereign nations on Earth. As you rightly say, there are only mutually-agreed treaties, which nations adhere to, or ignore, as the whim takes them. The only way that they can be enforced is by sanctioning, or going to war with, the transgressors – which is why the ‘big hitters’ amongst nations can basically do as they please – as Mr Trump is presently, and very effectively, demonstrating.
Real law requires enforcement as well as judicial process.
Quite so. In the West, international law emerged in the Middle Ages (though there were earlier precedents in Asia and India) from: canon law, which governed ecclesiastical institutions and clergy throughout Europe; the lex mercatoria (“merchant law”), which concerned trade and commerce; and various codes of maritime law aimed at regulating shipping in North-western Europe.
Essentially, international law at this point had a theological underpinning, as Natural Law: nations that didn’t follow the agreed codes would incur the wrath of God. Later theorists (eg Bentham, notably) shelved the theological and moral underpinning of international law, replacing Natural Law with Positive Law.
In the 20thC, the great jurist, H L A Hart, viewed international law as a set of primary rules (like those in a primitive society) rather than a developed legal system. It lacked secondary rules on adjudication and enforcement such as an international legislature or compulsory courts. International law was binding only through state acceptance and social pressure, and he classified it as “law” but not a fully fledged “legal system”. Ever since, international lawyers have sought to refute Hart’s position – most notably by Hart’s successor as Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford, Ronald Dworkin.
Ummmm Theo…. I hate to pull the legs from under your Philosophical
PotatoChair, but there was no such thing as “International Law” in the medieval period.There was only Ownership, and Rights attributed to that Ownership. Quite often deferred to lesser nobles who enacted their rights locally.
And they did that through liberal application of StabbyStuff™.
In fact the entire early history of the Netherlands is based on that principle.
*All* of it was Granted to the Bishop of Utrecht. Who, through that Canon Law of yours tried to “United Nations” the then Margrave of Holland with the Fear of God to do what he wanted. And when that failed sent Troops to “set things right in the eyes of God”.
Said Margrave, and his two successors, then proceeded to kick the living snot out of several armies sent by said Bishop, and later combined efforts of the Holy Roman Empire, got Excommunicated a whole 6 times, gained the rank of Duke, and secured hereditary ownership of Holland.
All the while doing a second spat against the Frysians in the north of Holland…
And that’s just *one* example… Laws in that time were ….rough guidelines… and only applied if you could actually *enforce* them.
Lawyers who argued Law UN-style in that time were *always* confronted with the standard Jurisprudence:
“You and which army, hmmmmm?”
So don’t pretend there’s been a Long Line of Jurisprudence in International Law.
There hasn’t been, never was.
Might made Right, and Treaties only worked when both sides’ might was more or less balanced enough to hurt both enough to Be Civil.
And this simple principle still exists today. Despite the Rising and Screaming of the Lawyers’ International Choir.
One of the oddest international laws I know of defined the status of the Debatable Land, a small patch of ground at the west end of the Scottish/English border.
The two realms agreed that it belonged to neither and that there should be neither people nor herds on it during the hours of darkness. During daylight it was grazed by cattle. (How the stinting of the grazing was organised I don’t know.)
This scheme survived for centuries until the time of James V; eventually the place was overrun by bandits and the two realms agreed to clear them out and divide the land between them. And so they did, built a dike to mark the new border, and that was that.
A key step in the pacification was hanging lots of Armstrongs. A bad lot, the Armstrongs. I had an Armstrong colleague once; duplicitous wee bugger.
…there was no such thing as “International Law” in the medieval period.
I never said there was. Bentham invented the term ‘international law’ in 1789 to replace the late medieval concept of ius gentium or law of nations, used by Hugo Grotius. So, yes, international law as we know it didn’t exist in the medieval period, but it did emerge from canon law, just war theory (Aquinas), lex mercatoria and various maritime codes.
So don’t pretend there’s been a Long Line of Jurisprudence in International Law.
I am not doing any such thing, though modern international law was not created ex nihilo but rather grew out of earlier traditions. For many centuries, states across the world have tried to agree rules for diplomacy, treaty-making, the just grounds for war, the rights of neutral parties, the consolidation and partition of states, etc. That these were often honoured more in the breach than the observance backs up H L A Hart’s point that modern international law is a set of primary rules (like those in a primitive society) – your “rough guidelines”, if you like – rather than a developed legal system.
What he is bemoaning is that these things are not determined by people like him. He’ll have you know he worked bloody hard to get the judiciary on a position of supreme power in this field and he’ll be damned of that’s going to change. I won’t compare him with Murphy in terms of competence because he does at least appear to have bona fide qualifications and some degree of knowledge of his topic but the desperate longing for relevance is similar.
Indeed, it’s basically: ” Where’s my cut of the loot?”
I wonder just how much he and Starmer are making from this? Starmer’s out to show his master Blair that he too can make billions…
I’d be surprised if at this point Starmer is personally making millions. Despite his obviously massive sense of entitlement I think that would offend his even more massive assumption of rectitude. I expect, much like his personal pension Statutory Instrument, there are a load of arrangements being constructed to ensure that for the rest of his life, Starmer is “well looked after” in return for having been a good, compliant, upstanding boy.
The other cunts will be raking it, mind. It’s what they do. Hermer is Mr. Creosote.
That’s what I think. “Friends of Starmer” are doing well.
It’s the sole reason why Starmer is clinging on, I believe. Once the Chagos surrender is irrevocably across the line, and his close male friends have received their fees, he will stand down, basking in the plaudits from Peking.
If the rules are perpendicular to principles then the rules should apply. This seems to be Sands’s view and it makes work for lawyers.
Self-determination and freedom. These are principles. But no international rules for them the bastards.
A great illustration between the fundamentally different world views of the right and the left.
The right see the world for what it is (whether they like it or not). They then act accordingly. They are also looking for outcomes.
The left see the world how they would like it to b. They also think that intentions matter and that only they (and their friends from time to time) have good intentions
I take treaties seriously but the claim that there’s meaningful International Law beyond those is spurious, isn’t it?
For instance, the Nuremberg trials weren’t Law: show trials more like, for people who should probably just have been shot out of hand.
Question: does the Geneva Convention have the status of a treaty? How can I not know this – is it ever mentioned in public?
I believe they do, but only apply to war.
There are loads of Geneva Conventions; it’s a popular place to have diplomatic meetings.
But yes, what people usually mean is the collection of Conventions that try to regulate the conduct of war. They are actually more binding than treaties, because non-compliance by one party doesn’t remove the other parties’ obligations, not even their obligations to the non-compliant party.
There are loads of Geneva Conventions
In fact, some were called “Hague Conventions.”
Thing is, Miller is right, of course. All structures have their breaking point. Lord of the Flies is eternal. Rules work until the giant tied down by the gossamer threads of the “RBO” realises it’s being fundamentally taken advantage of, stretches, and the threads break, just like that.
Well played, Mr Miller. Assuming, as one probably should, that Miller speaks for President Trump, well played, Mr Trump.
Trump Action triggers reflexive reaction from the commies, resulting in the commies publicly supporting a murderous dictator. With the likes of Phillipe Sands thinking he’s being very clever.
But this reaction is wholly proportionate for a human rights/International Law lawyer. If your career, life and social circles have all been built on the paradigm of Internal Law/Human Rights and then some uncouth bugger turns up in the White House and reverses it all… Well, you’re going to be well-fucked off, aren’t you?
Fascinating that, amongst all these references to Internal Law, the words and terms ‘freeedom, ‘fair electioms’, ‘accountability’, ‘democracy’, these do not get a mention.
Neither for that matter are they going to talk about the massacres of protesters in Iran right now.
Yup. International law is made between governments, it’s mostly about governments, and surprise surprise, guess who it primarily protects?
Yes, Indeed. International is currently allowing the mad mullahs in Iran to slaughter their population. I suppose if you’re really hard of heart you could argue none of our business because no externalities affect us.
It was a bit different with Maduro, there the externalities of drugs, impoverishing their population to the point illegal immigration, financing the likes of Hisbollah and even the external operations of the mad mullahs and more did effect us all.
Yet international law doesn’t allow their victims to remove him after he was given ample warnings.
Trump has been very busy lately. I’m unsure what Philippe Phaloppe is on about, but guess Maduro or Greenland, with America’s lesser military adventures in Nigeria, Syria and Iran also possible, and Columbia not completely out of the picture.
Trump is acting like a man with time not on his side. I speculate that he doesn’t expect to see out his term. It may be his health, or growing assassination threats. Sands KC doesn’t like audacity. He believes that management of international affairs should be entrusted to lawyers such as him, at fifty thousand quid a day.
I think it’s just the mid-terms coming up. As often happens in the US the opposition “win” those, making it much more difficult to get stuff in the second half of the mandate
I should like to think you are both wrong. Trump expects to be in office until January 2029. He just has a lot to do! No time to rest. What we are seeing is not the end; there is much more coming.
Up
This reminds me of a tangent: Here in USA, people have guns. Lots of guns. It used to be, til at least 1900 and beyond, that NO FEDERAL AGENT WOULD APPEAR IN THE SOUTHEAST. They would never be seen again. Federal laws were useless, because no one could enforce them.
I have taken to assuming that anyone who bleats about the “rules-based order” is either a duplicitous cunt or a moron unwittingly bleating on behalf of duplicitous cunts.
As usual – only the US is required to obey ‘the rules’. Everyone else can do what they want.