The One-State as a Demand of International Law: Jus Cogens

This article provides the initial contours of an argument that uses International Law to challenge the validity of Israeli apartheid. It challenges the conventional discourse of legal debates on Israel’s actions and bordersand seeks to link the illegalities of these actions to the validity of an inbuilt Israeli apartheid. The argument also connects the deontological doctrine of peremptory norms of International Law (jus cogens), the right of self-determination and the International Crime of Apartheid to the doctrine of state recognition. It applies these to the State of Israel and the vision of a single democratic state in historic Palestine

The Plea Bargain Machine

Conferência apresentada no III Seminário Internacional do INCT InEA

Anthropology and Law as two sibling rivals

This lecture discusses the relationship between two academic disciplines, law and anthropology, and suggests that the optimal relationship is, on the one hand, competitive and conflictual, and on the other hand, mutually respectful and supportive - something like the relationship between two sibling rivals. The conflictual aspects of this relationship derive from the different orientations of the two fields - instrumental for law, speculative for anthropology - and the fact that anthropology, based on long-term ethnography, often challenges and subverts law’s claims to distinctive authority.The positive aspects of the relationship build on the possibilities that each field can genuinely assist the other, as anthropological understanding can be extremely useful to lawyers, while lawyers are often the legal system’s most astute observers and critics, and thus can provide anthropologists with invaluable insights into the actual operations of legal systems. These points are illustrated through references to the author’s fieldwork in Palestine and legal practice experience in the United States