Recent Posts

[Jeff Deutch, PhD, is Research Director at Mnemonic and co-founder of Syrian Archive. Libby McAvoy, Esq., is a legal fellow with Mnemonic and the Video as Evidence program at WITNESS.] Photo credit: Syrian Archive. Whether in Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Hong Kong, Myanmar, the United States, Nigeria, Brasil, or elsewhere, over the last ten years civil society actors have produced and shared more content...

[Charli Carpenter is Professor in the Department of Political Science and Legal Studies at University of Massachusetts-Amherst specializing in international law and human security, and Director of Human Security Lab, an interdisciplinary initiative focused on science in the human interest.] Giovanni Mantilla has written what will likely become a landmark history of the evolution of the Geneva Conventions. His monograph is simultaneously a detailed diplomatic history and an analytical argument about the power and...

Alas, we are losing our wonderful Editorial Assistant, Parisa Zangeneh, who needs to focus on her PhD at NUI-Galway. Parisa has been an incredible asset to Opinio Juris as an editor and in terms of her own blogging. (See here for an example of the latter.) She will be much missed, though she will maintain her blogging rights and we...

[Alejandro Chehtman is a Professor of Law at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (Argentina) and Fellow at the Argentine National Research Council (CONICET).] In Lawmaking under pressure Giovanni Mantilla has written an indispensable book for anyone interested in, or working on the laws of armed conflict, international legal history, and the theory of international relations (IR). The book uncovers and critically examines the process through which...

Kathryn Greenman has published her piece here in our joint symposium with Armed Groups and International Law. Kathryn Greenman is a lecturer in law at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Prior to joining UTS, Kathryn was a PhD candidate at the Amsterdam Center for International Law at the University of Amsterdam and a Kathleen Fitzpatrick Visiting Doctoral Fellow with the Laureate Program in...

[Neta C. Crawford is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Boston University.] How does international law get made?  In particular, how was it that diplomats were able to craft international rules governing internal conflicts when sovereign states have little or no inherent interest in being constrained by those laws?  Or at least great powers don’t want to be told what to do. ...

Over at Armed Groups and International Law, Alonso Gurmendi has published his contribution. Check it out here! Alonso Gurmendi is an Assistant Professor at Universidad del Pacífico, in Lima, Peru, where he specializes in international humanitarian law and use of force, with a focus on the history of international law. Currently, he is also a PhD candidate at University College London (UCL). ...

[Giovanni Mantilla is University Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) and Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, and of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law and is the author of Lawmaking under Pressure: International Humanitarian law and Internal Armed Conflict.] Lawmaking under Pressure: International Humanitarian Law and Internal Armed Conflict is the culmination of several years of research and...

Over the coming week, along with Armed Groups and International Law, we are thrilled to co-host a symposium on Giovanni Mantilla's latest book, Lawmaking under Pressure: International Humanitarian Law and Internal Armed Conflict. Scholars and practitioners who will be weighing in in addition to Giovanni include: Alonso Gurmendi, Neta Crawford, Kathryn Greenman, Alejandro Chehtman, Verity Robson, Charli Carpenter, Boyd van Dijk, Iris Mueller and...

[Jessica Dorsey is an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University School of Law and Associate Research Fellow at the International Center for Counter-Terrorism--the Hague. Nilza Amaral is a Project Manager with the International Security Programme at Chatham House with expertise in drone technology and the conduct of war. Part I of the post can be found here.] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhslESKNes4&t=2s Explainer: European Use of Military...