This article focuses on the application of autonomous weapons (AWs) in defensive systems and, consequently, assesses the conditions of the legality of employing such weapons from the perspective of ...the right to self-defence. How far may humans exert control over AWs? Are there any legal constraints in using AWs for the purpose of self-defence? How does their use fit into the traditional criteria of self-defence? The article claims that there are no legal grounds to exclude AWs in advance from being employed to exercise the right to self-defence. In general, the legality of their use depends on how they were pre-programmed by humans and whether they were activated under proper circumstances. The article is divided into three parts. The first discusses how human control over AWs affects the legality of their use. Secondly, the article analyses the criteria of necessity and proportionality during the exercise of the right to self-defence in the context of the employment of AWs. Finally, the use of AWs for anticipatory, pre-emptive or preventive self-defence is investigated.
This article discusses self-defense in the context of domestic violence. In Georgian reality, the boundaries of self-defense are generally narrowly defined; however, when self-defensive violence ...occurs in the family when the aggressor is an intimate partner and the defender is a woman, the accused faces even more barriers to justice, which is determined by gender stereotypes and traditional views on domestic violence. There is a difficult situation regarding femicide in Georgia; in 2021, 22 women were killed just because they were women. Women are killed by their intimate partners, and the antecedents of the murder are similar. Women turn to the police for protection from violence, but to no avail. In such a horrifying reality, where the state, whose obligation it is, does not protect a woman from a violent partner, limiting the right to self-defense is another violation of the state’s obligation to protect life and physical integrity. A correct and bold interpretation of the right to self-defense by the court is necessary to weaken the aggressor on the one hand and to strengthen the defender on the other hand. In the Georgian reality, by trivializing domestic violence and leaving it in the personal space, more barriers are created for women to reach justice by being obliged to endure the aggression of a tyrant husband/partner. In the article, the author tries to show by observing a judicial practice that artificial barriers limit the right to defend oneself against the aggression of an intimate partner; a woman is punished for injuring the aggressor, while the law should justify her. Single acquittals cannot change systemic injustice, but the author’s goal is to show and analyze such significant decisions so that more people can learn about correct judicial interpretations. According to the author, discrimination based on gender is characteristic of Georgian justice; by identifying problems and critically analyzing court decisions, she tries to show the ways of legal regulation of the problem. KEYWORDS: Self-defense, Battered Woman, Discrimination.
The purpose of this study was to examine, via testimonial data, resistance strategies used to thwart a sexual assault among slum-dwelling Kenyan adolescent girls (N = 678) following their ...participation in an empowerment self-defense program (IMpower). The majority (58.2%) of perpetrators were strangers; there were no differences in resistance strategies used between strangers versus known perpetrators (83.8% used verbal strategies, 33.2% used resistance strategies, 16.7% ran away, and 7.9% used distraction). Associations between resistance strategies and perpetrator tactics, number of assailants, location of the assault, and the presence of a bystander were also examined.
What are the legacies of armed resistance? Why do some communities engage in armed mobilization in response to violence, disorder, and insecurity, while others under very similar conditions do not? ...Focusing on mobilization against organized crime in contemporary Mexico, we argue that historical experiences of armed resistance can have lasting effects on local preferences, networks, and capacities, which can facilitate armed collective action under conditions of rampant insecurity in the long run. Empirically, we study the Cristero rebellion in the early 20th century and grassroots anti-crime mobilization in Mexico during recent years. Using an instrumental variables approach, we show that communities that pushed back against state incursions almost a century earlier were more likely to rise up against organized crime in contemporary times.
This research used a self-defense program to explore how middle school girls could change their perspectives on the gendered roles of victim and protector within an empowered self-defense approach. ...Taking the dual role of researcher and self-defense instructor, I developed a program to influence changing information strips directed toward gender norms, behavior, and discourse. Reflexive thematic analysis was utilized due to its intersection of the researcher's experience, literature, and theory. The research consisted of 40 girls journaling and 23 girls completing a post-program survey. Findings suggested that reflexive body techniques through self-defense could potentially impact internalized gendered information strips.
This study evaluated the effectiveness of a 6-session (12-hour) empowerment self-defense classroom delivered curriculum (i.e., IMpower) among American Indian girls. Girls (N = 74) in one middle ...school and two high schools on an Indian Reservation in the Great Plains region of the United States received the intervention and completed a pre-test and a post-test six months following the final program session. The surveys administered assessed hypothesized intermediary (i.e., efficacy to resist a sexual assault, self-defense knowledge), primary (i.e., sexual violence victimization), and secondary (i.e., physical dating violence, sexual harassment) outcomes. Native American girls (N = 181) in five middle schools and three high schools in a nearby city where there was no sexual assault prevention occurring completed surveys assessing sexual violence, physical dating violence, and sexual harassment victimization approximately six months apart, thus serving as a comparison to girls in the treatment condition on primary and secondary outcomes. Girls exposed to the IMpower program reported significant increases over time in efficacy to resist a sexual assault and knowledge of effective resistance strategies. Furthermore, propensity score analyses suggested that girls who received the IMpower program reported significantly fewer types of sexual assault and sexual harassment at follow-up compared to girls in the control condition. However, no effect was found for physical dating violence. These data suggest that empowerment self-defense is a promising approach in preventing sexual assault and sexual harassment among American Indian girls.
Defendants suffering from delusion currently are subject to inequitable treatment in our criminal justice system. They can genuinely believe, due to a delusion, that a person right in front of them ...has a gun and is about to kill them. Acting in what they believe is self-defense, they can draw a gun and kill their would-be assailant. Many in their same situation, facing what they believe to be an imminent threat against their life with no ability to escape, would do the exact same thing. In fact, the law in all fifty states would allow a defendant actually facing such a threat to raise a self-defense claim. However, under many states' laws, the defendant suffering from delusions still will be found guilty of murder. Mistake of fact doctrines generally require mistakes to be reasonable, so the defendant will not be entitled to a self-defense claim because delusions are inherently unreasonable. Yet only seven states have insanity defenses that explicitly account for delusions. Thus, the jury may still find them guilty under that jurisdiction's insanity test. This creates a paradox: defendants are too insane to qualify for the mistake of fact doctrine, yet too sane to escape punishment under the insanity defense. This paradox has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, as many jurisdictions seek to abolish or modify their insanity tests-often leaving defendants suffering from delusions behind in the process.
This Note proposes a novel test to fix this paradox: the step zero test. It is built off the fourth answer the Justices gave in the famous M'Naghten Case. While that answer has largely fallen to historical obscurity, my proposed test revives that answer and repurposes it to solve this modern problem. The test operates as follows: the jury is to accept the facts as the defendant in their delusional state believed them to exist. Accepting those facts as true, if the defendant would otherwise have an affirmative defense, the jury is required to acquit by reason of insanity. This instruction would be given before any other insanity instruction. After the jury performs this test, they would proceed to the jurisdiction's usual insanity test. Requiring the jury to go through this preliminary step to any insanity defense ensures that defendants suffering from delusions are, at a bare minimum, treated equally before the law as everybody else.
The concepts of necessity, imminence, and proportionality play a central part in Daniel Bethlehem's sixteen proposed principles regulating a state's use of force against an imminent or actual attack ...by nonstate actors. While all three are requirements that must be considered in the law of self-defense, their exact content remains somewhat unclear. In this comment, we examine how each one is conceived in Bethlehem's principles and review the questions that remain unanswered.
There has been an ongoing debate over recent years about the scope of a state’s right of selfdefense against an imminent or actual armed attack by nonstate actors. The debate predates the Al Qaeda ...attacks against the World Trade Center and elsewhere in the United States on September 11,2001, but those events sharpened its focus and gave it greater operational urgency. While an important strand of the debate has taken place in academic journals and public forums, there has been another strand, largely away from the public gaze, within governments and between them, about what the appropriate principles are, and ought to be, in respect of such conduct. Insofar as these discussions have informed the practice of states and their appreciations of legality, they carry particular weight, being material both to the crystallization and development of customary international law and to the interpretation of treaties.
Empowerment self-defense (ESD) researchers and instructors have long speculated that ESD training not only reduces women’s risk of sexual assault victimization but also leads to positive outcomes ...with potential to reduce gender disparities and advance gender justice. In this study, we examine ESD participants’ perspectives about the most important outcomes of their participation in ESD training. Data included qualitative interviews and open-ended survey responses from 268 participants enrolled in one of two ESD courses: A 30-h university course and a 9-h community-based course. Using reflexive thematic analysis, we found that although some participants reported that their most important lessons reflected the explicit curriculum of the courses (i.e., physical and verbal skills for resisting violence), many others reported unexpected and often profound ways their lives changed through learning ESD. These outcomes, stemming from what we call the
underlying curriculum
, included changes in their self-perceptions, expectations for interactional equality, and critical gender consciousness. Findings support the utilization of ESD training not only as sexual violence primary prevention but also as programs to promote gender justice.
