In association with the International Commission of Jurists

September 2014

30 Sep

John Stewart’s Sept. 29 clip “Cameron - What are you Doing?” is a must see on comparative constitutional law.   Stewart contrasts the fulsome and spirited debate in the UK on whether to authorize airstrikes against ISIL, with the absence of congressional action in the US.   Well worth watching. And quite funny.   Here is the show.    ...

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30 Sep

House Speaker John Boehner said in an interview on Sunday that ground troops may be necessary in order to stop the threat of ISIS. Although his comments were interwoven with lots of unnecessary talk of ISIS being barbarians, which I don't think is terribly helpful, I do agree with his bottom-line assessment: air power and proxy ground troops won't be enough...

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29 Sep

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa The IMF has extended its zero-interest loans to Ghana, Sierra Leone and Liberia to provide support in the fight against Ebola. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called upon the world to do more. The ICC has opened a formal examination into the situation in the Central African Republic. Middle...

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29 Sep

I will be back blogging regularly soon, but I want to call readers' attention to a phenomenal new article at the Intercept by Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain about how the US government has cynically manipulated public fears of terrorism in order to justify its bombing campaign in Syria. Recall that Samantha Power -- the UN Ambassador formerly known as...

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28 Sep

[Myriam Feinberg is a Post-Doctoral Fellow of the GlobalTrust Project, Tel Aviv University (as of October 1, 2014)] As part of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism's 14th Annual World Summit on Counter-Terrorism, a workshop was jointly organised by the ICT and the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism of Syracuse University (INSCT), as part of the project ‘New Battlefields, Old Laws.’ Started in 2006 to adapt our understanding of laws of war, the NBOL Project brings together scholars and experts who aim to address the challenges for the future of armed conflict. This year's NBOL workshop dealt with the way we adapt to new threats and expanding battlefields in counterterrorism and culminated in an Oxford Union style debate on the future of the 2001 AUMF. A video of the debate can be found here. The debate could not have been timelier as the blogosphere is abuzz following President Obama’s speech on the United States’ ‘Strategy to Counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)’ delivered on the eve of the thirteenth anniversary of the attacks of 11 September 2001. In his speech, the President authorised further air strikes against ISIL militants in Iraq and appeared to authorise air strikes in Syria.   He stated that he secured bipartisan support and welcomed further congressional action, yet also made clear that he did not need further authorisation from Congress to launch the strike. Other official statements made clear that the administration was relying on the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, which authorized the use of force against those responsible for the September 11, 2001, as a justification for striking ISIL. This comes despite a national security address at the US Military Academy in May 2013, when Obama said he wanted to repeal the 2001 AUMF. At the NBOL workshop, Professor Nathan A. Sales of Syracuse University College of Law and Professor Jennifer Daskal of American University Washington College of Law debated the following motion: ‘This House believes that the 2001 AUMF should be amended to authorize force against future terrorist threats’.
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28 Sep

Calls for Papers The British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) is making a worldwide Call for Papers on British Influences on International Law 1915-2015. The Institute is publishing a series of books to commemorate the centenary of the establishment in London of the Grotius Society (a forerunner of BIICL) in 1915. One of these books is on British Influences...

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27 Sep

This week on Opinio Juris, Jens, Jennifer Trahan and Julian discussed the international legal basis for the air strikes against ISIS. Jens also analysed why Khorasan is seen as a more immediate threat to the US than ISIS. For more on the US domestic legal basis, check out Deborah's post with a snippet from her Daily Beast article on the perennial US War Powers...

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24 Sep

[Anton Moiseienko received his LL.M. from the University of Cambridge and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Queen Mary, University of London. All translations from Russian in this piece are his own. He is a citizen of Ukraine.] Few people with any background in international law would doubt that Russia’s annexation of Crimea raises serious questions of compliance with international law....

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23 Sep

I agree with Jens' excellent post on the importance of the "unwilling or unable" standard to the US justification for legal strikes on non-state actors in Syria.  I agree this action may reveal state practice supporting (or rejecting) this legal justification.  I am curious whether the UK, France, or other states that may be participating in Syria strikes will embrace this theory....

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23 Sep

Today the U.S. launched airstrikes against ISIS and other extremist groups within Syrian territory. In the past, airstrikes were limited to Iraqi territory, which came with the consent of the Iraq government (and were thus legally uncontroversial from the perspective of jus ad bellum). Today's airstrikes require a sophisticated legal argument to explain the intrusion on Syria's territorial sovereignty. Samantha...

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23 Sep

[Jennifer Trahan is an Associate Clinical Professor of Global Affairs at NYU-SPS.] President Obama’s speech on September 10th raised many legal issues, including, whether there needs to be added Congressional authorization for the use of force, or one can utilize the pre-existing Authorization for the Use of Military Force (“AUMF”) that Congress granted after 9/11 (see Deborah Pearlstein’s post and Peter Spiro’s).  But his speech also raised profound questions at a second level – that of public international law (touched upon by Kevin Jon Heller). This may not seize the attention of the American public, but surely coalition partners would ask these questions:  what was Obama’s basis for the legality of air strikes in Syria? It is somewhat troubling that President Obama took the step of supporting air strikes in Syria, without articulating any clear legal foundation at the international level.  Just to be clear, the issue of air strikes in Iraq against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (“ISIS”) does not raise similar questions, as Iraq had earlier consented to the use of force. There are a number of possible legal rationales for air strikes in Syria, but the U.S. needs to make the case under one of these grounds.  Such a legal foundation was not well-articulated in President Obama’s speech. 
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22 Sep

The United States continues to launch airstrikes against ISIS. Not only is it unclear if the airstrikes are working to dislodge ISIS from its territory, but recent press reports suggest that ISIS is not even the most important threat facing U.S. interests. The New York Times quotes Director of National Intelligence James Clapper as saying that the militant group Khorasan poses...

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