How did the USA justify its war against Vietnam by way of International Law? According to Shaws book on International Law: The Soviet Union made considerable use of legal arguments in its efforts to establish its non-liability to contribute towards the peace-keeping operations of the UN [sic]. And the Americans too, justified their activities with regards to Cuba and Vietnam by reference to international law. Q. What were the US arguments, I assume at the UN, with regards to its war in Vietnam? If it's not clear, I'm not asking here about the political dimensions but it's legal dimensions; (although the political dimension would be welcome).
They were there at the invitation the government of Vietnam This is the justification. The government of South Vietnam was the internationally recognised government of South Vietnam (at least by the USA and it’s allies - it’s not a requirement of international law to be recognised by everyone). They were engaged in counter-insurgency against internal rebels. They asked the USA and other nations to help. Those nations agreed to help.
Websites are not ships that can choose a flag of convenience to govern which country's laws govern them. Generally speaking an analysis of which jurisdiction's law applies (which is strictly speaking a "choice of law" question as much as it is a jurisdiction question) isn't undertaken on a website by website, or business by business basis. Instead, jurisdiction and choice of law are evaluated on a claim by claim basis. The owners of a website may be subject to some claims in India, to some in Bhutan, and to others in the United States, depending upon the claim. Without knowing who is trying to sue for what, you can't know. Generally speaking, a business that operates in multiple jurisdictions, like a website, will be subject to the laws of all of the jurisdictions in which it does business in regard to claims with a connection to those jurisdictions. Of course, as a practical matter, only claims that can be enforced against the owners of the website are relevant, which usually means that only claims brought where the owners reside or own assets are relevant. If the website owners own property or have amounts payable to them in India, there is a very good chance that India can, as a practical matter, assert jurisdiction over them. And, it is likely, as a practical matter, that Saudi Arabia or China would not be able to assert jurisdiction over them in a meaningful way. The fact that businesses can be conducted through legal entities further complicates the analysis. But, at any rate, the place to begin is to realize that the question "Under which country's jurisdiction does a website fall?" is basically a category error. You need to ask "Under which country's jurisdiction does a website fall when it is sued or prosecuted for X kind of matter by someone who lives in Y?" So, really, this one question is actually dozens or hundreds of questions that each have to be analyzed individually.
The general rule is that force may be legally used in defense of self. I will draw on RCW 9A.16.020, other jurisdictions say essentially the same thing. The relevant parts are: (3) Whenever used by a party about to be injured, or by another lawfully aiding him or her, in preventing or attempting to prevent an offense against his or her person, or a malicious trespass, or other malicious interference with real or personal property lawfully in his or her possession, in case the force is not more than is necessary Curated internet videos don't tell the whole story, but for the sake of argument I will assume that Mr X chucked a bottle at Tyson, and Tyson proceeded to punish him with his fists. Both parties thus committed a crime. The new report indicates that there will be no prosecutions &quot;based on 'the circumstances surrounding the confrontation'&quot;, which I take to include all of the available evidence. Prosecution for a crime is discretionary. There is no requirement at a prosecutor file charges in every instance where (in the prosecutor's professional opinion) a conviction can be secured. The abstract law is clear: both parties committed a crime. The abstract law is also clear that a prosecutor has discretion to decide whether to prosecute.
The issue is not whether it is an &quot;act of violence&quot;. The fundamental political theory of classically liberal capitalist democracies is that the state has a monopoly on the use of force and violence, or at least, is entitled to assert one if it wishes to do so. But it is recognized as a matter of political theory that the use of force and violence and the credible threat of it, is necessary to secure good order and fairness and justice in society (and from outsiders attacking the society), and to encourage people to act appropriately towards each other. In a classical liberal capitalist democracy, this monopoly on the use of force and violence is regulated and made less abusive by providing that neither liberty or property can be taken by the state without due process of law (except in certain well defined exigent circumstances where due process is provided after the fact). The nuances of what due process is required is what differs. Overall, more due process is required for more serious deprivations, and less is required for less serious deprivations since the consequences of getting it wrong are smaller and don't justify the dead weight loss of more expensive litigation in the same way. Generally, incarceration is deemed to be more serious than a fine or money judgment as explained below, so it needs more due process protections. So, the issue is that interference with personal liberty is taken more seriously than interference with property, and the answer comes from understanding why the former is more serious than the latter. At its heart, this is a widely shared normative view. And, in U.S. constitutional law, this isn't an all or nothing proposition. For example, short deprivations of liberty (incarceration for six months or less) are penalties that a state or local government may take without a jury trial, while longer deprivations of liberty carry with them the right to trial by jury, and moderate to severe deprivations of liberty (typically felonies punishable by three or more years) typically carry with them the right to an evidentiary preliminary hearing before a judge prior to a trial on the merits before a jury that is not available for less serious offenses. Similarly, there is not an absolute right to counsel at state expense in all proceedings in which an indigent defendant might be incarcerated. When the case is prosecuted by a government official, this is the case, but when someone facts potential incarceration for willfully disobeying a court order until that person complies (contempt of court) and the case is prosecuted by a private litigant (possibly pro se), there is not a U.S. Constitutional right to counsel. In the same vein, there are weaker due process protections for someone accused of a pre-trial release rule violation, violation of jail or prison rules, probation violation, parole violations, and requests to be released on parole, when they are already under some form of correctional supervision, even though they can result in longer periods of incarceration, than there are someone living their daily life faces potential criminal punishment. I can't piece together exactly how this came to be, and the legal theory literature is rather thin and not wildly referred to by practitioners. But a couple of key historical points come to mind. One is that due process protections for moderate to serious felony offense criminal defendants were historically important, because certainly as of the 18th century in common law jurisdictions, the death penalty was routinely imposed for offenses that did not cause the death of the victim, such as burglary, robbery, and rape, in part, because the governments of these societies didn't have the economic resources necessary to incarcerate serious criminals for long enough periods of time to protect the public from recidivism and to adequately deter the conduct in the first place. While the line between property and liberty may be debatable, no one would seriously doubt that the historic divide between loss of life and loss of property clearly called for more due process protections against loss of life. A second is that in the late 18th century and early 19th century, a political movement arose to oppose debtor's prisons (and the related civil remedy called &quot;body execution&quot;), as disproportionate and inefficient. Prior to that time, one remedy of a creditor against someone who failed to pay a debt was to have them thrown into a &quot;debtor's prison&quot; or &quot;work house&quot; where they were placed in involuntary servitude until the debt was paid in full. Essentially, the moral argument was that being poor should not be a ground for being incarcerated and simple failure to pay a contactual debt routinely involves merely being poor. In the U.S., Congress outlawed debtors prisons in 1833. The 14th Amendment adopted after the U.S. Civil War, prohibited not just slavery, but involuntary servitude for failure to pay debts, when indentured involuntary servitude to pay costs of an apprenticeship or a passage to the Americas from the Old World, had been common in the colonial period, and into the early 19th century. In 1983 the Supreme Court ruled that in order to jail a person for failure to pay a fine or fee, the judge must first consider if the person was 'willfully' choosing not to pay. Closely related to this, which was a fairly new idea in the 18th century, was the idea of making the discharge of debts that a debtor has no reasonable ability to repay from the debtor's assets or earnings in the short term, routinely available as a matter of right in a court bankruptcy proceeding. Thus, weaker due process protections for monetary debts is backstopped by the fact that the harshness of this is limited by the fact that the debts can often be wiped out in bankruptcy if they are excessive, and that even if they can't be discharged in bankruptcy, that modern limits on the assets and income from which debts can be collected, almost automatically makes such debts survivable for a debtor. So, the risk of doing too much harm with an erroneous judgment is mitigated. Also, keep in mind that most money judgments and fines are compensatory in nature, are a rough justice approximation of compensation, or are proportionate to the seriousness of the harm done in the view of democratically elected legislators, acting collectively, who are presumed to be reasonable. If you deprive someone of property, for example, by failing to repay money loaned, or by destroying their property, taking a like amount of money or property from you seems like simple justice that doesn't call for close scrutiny, whether that comes in the form of a civil money judgment or a criminal restitution award. Similarly, most fines, for things like illegal parking, traffic violations, or minor municipal ordinance violations, are petty. Often they are less than one day's pay for the defendant, and hence, much less serious that depriving someone of liberty for more than a few hours. It is patently less severe. Also, the severity of a money judgment or fine bears a relationship to the ability of someone facing it to pay it. Typically, people who can afford cars can also afford parking tickets and traffic fines. Typically, people who drive cars are required to get insurance to pay meaningful amounts of money to people harmed if they have accidents. Typically, creditors only extend credit to people for whom it is not to burdensome to repay the debt. Typically, homeowners can afford to pay fines for municipal ordinance violations for failing to mow their lawns. In Northern Europe, there is an effort to reconcile the economic impact of incarceration on someone to presumptive prison sentences, with a system of &quot;day-fines&quot; where an offense is deemed to justify a prison sentence of up to X days, and that is converted to a fine equal to one day's wages for the defendant times the number of days (sentences imposed with the full due process protections of criminal defendants). This prevents the state from having to incur great expense to incarcerate someone who has already burden society by breaking its rules, and instead has the opposite economic effect on the state. It also prevents the community ties of the defendant from being disrupted and prevents criminal defendants from being unduly influenced by other offenders who would be incarcerated with that defendant potentially leading all involved to commit more future crimes. And, paying a fine still leaves a defendant with considerable liberty to interact with friends and family, enjoy low cost entertainment options, and move about where he or she desires. Incarceration deprives the offender of income, and also imposes all sorts of limitations on the defendant. One could imagine a system, like the day-fine system, where many fines that are punishment in excess of mere compensation or good approximation of it for the harm done are routinely as several in impact to a defendant as incarceration is to a defendant. But the U.S. does not have such a system. Punitive fines authorized by law are very rarely even remotely as severe as typical sentences of incarceration for the crimes for which those fines are authorized, when committed by natural persons. So, since fines, while they could be more severe than incarceration in a hypothetical legal system, rarely are in most non-day fine legal regimes, affording maximal due process protections in cases of incarceration but not monetary punishment flows naturally from the mere fact that incarceration, in practice, is almost always a more severe punishment, and because a bright line rule is easier to apply even in the rare cases when a fine might be more serious than incarceration. Greater due process in more severe cases makes sense because inaccurate judicial imposition or non-imposition of punishment in minor matters is less of a big deal than in very serious matters. Finally, it is worth noting that incarceration is usually reserved for offenses in which the typical defendant would be utterly incapable of providing money compensation, because the harm done is so great. Criminal offenses punishable by incarceration are designed for instances of &quot;incalculable harm&quot; that can't be made right with the defendant's money, while civil offenses are generally chosen as a policy option in cases where the harm caused in manageable relative to the ability of someone to make it right with a compensatory payment and/or a fine or punitive damages that proportionately compares to the harm done that is not merely economic in some way. The notion that incalculable harms are more serious and hence more important to get right, than those which are measurable and compensable, again, argues for greater due process protections in incarceration cases. (Another area where due process protections are similarly great is in termination of parental rights cases, by the way, which implicate similarly serious and incalculable harm matters.) I know that this lacks citation, but it does go a bit to illustrating the motivating ideas.
So Maryland is a Defimation Per Se state, and lists accusations of moral turpitude, criminal conduct, or fraud. I would say on the second statement about offering support ot Hamas and/or Hezbollah, which are considered terrorist organizations. Being buddies with Louis Farakhan's buddy is likely not a Per Se defamatory statement but a Per Quod meaning you would have to prove damages from this false assertion. Remember that just because you disagree with his political positions does not mean you aren't capable of sitting down with him for a friendly happy hour debate over politics. Lots of people have good friends who they debate politics with and will still be friendly with. I would make certain that you go through your history of statements on social media and in public to make certain you don't have anything that can be construed as supporting political beliefs that these organizations support (even if you don't support those organization's methods of obtaining their political goal). Do not limit yourself to just material support (donating things of value to them). I'm not for the purposes of this answer going to comment on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but if your political opinions on the matter are in favor of Palestine, the statements above, while hyperbolic, are not totally out of line and thus defamitory, since all of the accused associations against you are also big names in pro-Palestine support circles. Try to also look for any statements where, unprompted, you are critical of the statements of the three false associations. As always, you should discuss specifics with a lawyer specializing in this matter. Most firms will offer a consultation for free so you can discuss the case and the specifics and get advice as to what you should do. I do not think you will be awarded much beyond basic actual damages and legal fees from the guy, since the statements have not caused you any damages such as loss of job or becoming a target of government investigation by law enforcement agencies.
It is unlikely that the US, or any government, would condone any kind of crime. The reason for this is that the law must be seen to be impartial and applied fairly to all those subject to it. What happens if tomorrow, the government decides they don't like you? It is possible that this type of activity, or activity amounting to it, would be sanctioned in specific, authorised cases. But the government throwing a lynch mob at anyone is a bad idea for order and a peaceful society.
england-and-wales Alice's defence will be that she had an honest belief, given the circumstances, that force was necessary and the force she used was reasonable in defence of John (and possibly Alice). John's consent is irrelevant unless it had some bearing on that. Why did John oppose the use of force? Did John tell Alice not to shoot because he would rather die than cause a death? Irrelevant. Did John tell Alice not to shoot because he believed Bob was not a real threat due to circumstances X, Y and/or Z that he wanted Alice to heed? Relevant.
The First Amendment does indeed guarantee the freedom to express any idea or viewpoint, the limitation being incitement to immediate lawless action, recently reaffirmed in Snyder v. Phelps (many free speech cases have been about criminal restrictions on speech, this applied even to a suit for intentional infliction of emotional distress). There isn't a clear line that distinguishes "advocating violation of the law" and "inciting to immediate lawlessness". Saying "(You should) shoot The Man whenever you see him" would be protected expression, but "There's a cop, somebody kill him" would be incitement. It also has to be a "credible" incitement, so saying "Kill him now!" to a room full of pacifist nuns would not constitute incitement. Things said to an angry mob would be more along the lines of incitement.