Most readers are probably keenly familiar with International Law Reporter, the brainchild of Professor Jacob Katz Cogan (Cincinnati). For those not aware, ILR provides notices of scholarship, conferences, calls for papers, and the like -- and it's available in RSS feeds and via Twitter. (There's even a tip jar!) It's invaluable for anyone in international law and, I expect, anyone...
[Nancy Simons is a Belgian lawyer and serves on the International Bar Association’s Drones Task Force. Her professional background lies in international law generally. She has worked at a number of international non-governmental organisations and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.] It has been almost two weeks since the United States (US) initiated several missile strikes on a Syrian...
I read Jennifer Trahan's post yesterday with great interest -- but not surprisingly I disagree with it. Before I get to my disagreements, though, I think it's bizarre that we are all debating the legality of unilateral humanitarian intervention in the context of the recent US missile attack on Syria. It simply beggars belief to think that the attack was in any way motivated...
Over at Vox, I have published an essay fleshing out the thoughts I first published here on the legality of the recent U.S. cruise missile attacks on Syria and the international reaction to it. President Donald Trump’s surprising decision to launch a cruise missile strike on Syria was sharply criticized by Russia as a “flagrant violation of international law.” While it might be...
[Jennifer Trahan is Associate Clinical Professor, at The Center for Global Affairs, NYU-SPS, and Chair of the American Branch of the International Law Association’s International Criminal Court Committee. The views expressed are those of the author.] Postings on Opinio Juris seem fairly squarely against the legality of the U.S. missile strike last week into Syria. Let me join Jens David Ohlin (blogging...
As I write this, the ASIL annual meeting is conducting a well-timed, previously unannounced panel discussion about the legality of the missile strikes against Assad's airbase in Syria. In addition to Harold Koh (Yale Law School), who has argued in support of humanitarian intervention, the speakers include moderator Catherine Powell (Fordham Law School), Jennifer Daskal (AU Washington College of Law), Steve Pomper...
On Monday, my friend Beth van Schaack posted an excellent analysis at Just Security of the Syria War Crimes Accountability Act of 2017, a bipartisan Senate bill "[t]o require a report on, and to authorize technical assistance for, accountability for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Syria." Beth summarises the most important aspects of the bill; in this...
[Gabor Rona is a Visiting Professor of Law and Director of the Law and Armed Conflict Project at Cardozo Law School. Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights, Cardozo School of Law.] “It’s not war. We haven’t gone to war against Syria.” These are the quoted words of former legal advisor of the U.S....
In a comment to my earlier post on humanitarian intervention and natural rights, Adil Haque asks me the following question: Can States voluntarily make binding agreements that curtail their natural rights of legitimate defense for the sake of greater collective security? Here's my answer. The positive law can expand the natural right but cannot curtail it. To explain my answer, let's think...
Everyone seems to have lined up against humanitarian intervention this week. I'm not sure if the proponents of intervention have changed their mind, or if they are keeping quiet, or if they never existed in the first place. Either way, I want to be clear -- if it isn't obvious already from my prior scholarship -- that I support a limited...
The blogosphere is now so fast that we can get an enormous sampling of expert opinion in a very short time. So within 24 hours of President Trump’s military strikes on Syria, we have already heard from former Bush State Department Legal Advisor John Bellinger, former Obama State Department Legal Advisors Harold Koh and Brian Egan, former DOJ officials and...