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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   18087 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

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The treaty establishing the jurisdiction of the court in question specifically excluded the U.K.s relationships with its former possessions. A lawyer-brained person would have no problem ignoring the court under such circumstances.

I think there's a difference in meaning going on here.

Parent commenter seems to mean "lawyer brained" as "treats the law as a totem or religion, sacred and inviolable, the font from which all good springs" whereas you seem to be meaning the type of person who will comb through reams of fine print to find the one technicality that lets them do what they wanted to all along.

Basically, subservience to law versus wielding the law as a weapon.

Starmer did a lot of work in, and seems to respect a great deal, international law in particular. The thing about international law is that it often has virtually no enforcement mechanism. The kind of lawyer who looks for technicalities to let their client get off scot-free does not go into international law, since their clients are already usually getting off scot-free if you do nothing at all. You need to have some moral belief in the righteousness of international law and need to use the weapons of activism as well to get anything done.

So the technically correct terminus for Starmer is international-law-brained.

Parent commenter seems to mean "lawyer brained" as "treats the law as a totem or religion, sacred and inviolable, the font from which all good springs"

So, bad lawyer-brained?

I mean the sort of brain you'd expect a lawyer to have, which is definitely closer to the second. They're advocates, after all.

This issue is the focus of the sole dissent from the ICJ's opinion (authored by Judge Donoghue of the US).

Today the Court recites once again that there would be “compelling reasons” to decline to give an advisory opinion when such a reply “would have the effect of circumventing the principle that a State is not obliged to allow its disputes to be submitted to judicial settlement without its consent”. However, the decision to render today’s Advisory Opinion demonstrates that this incantation is hollow. It is difficult to imagine any dispute that is more quintessentially bilateral than a dispute over territorial sovereignty. The absence of United Kingdom consent to adjudication of that bilateral dispute has been steadfast and deliberate. Mauritius was thwarted by this absence of consent, so took another route, pursuing the present request and thereby fulfilling the affirmation of its Foreign Minister in 2004 that the State would use “all avenues open to us in order to exercise our full sovereign rights over the Chagos Archipelago”. The delivery of this Advisory Opinion is a circumvention of the absence of consent.

Donoghue is complaining about the Court's actions, but even had the opinion been unanimous, the point would stand; the court does not have jurisdiction and so its opinion (even if perfectly well-reasoned according to its own rules) is not binding. It's even right there in the name, "Advisory Opinion". Any actually "lawyer-brained" person know this and not feel bound by the opinion. Therefore lawyer-brainedness is not an explanation for Starmer's actions.

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