Recent Posts

As many of our readers may recall, the late Professor Michael Lewis was a great friend of this blog and an important voice in U.S. international law and national security scholarship.  To honor his memory, the Federalist Society has recently launched the first annual Michael Lewis Memorial Teleforum in his honor.  The podcast features Maj. Gen. Charles Dunlap (Professor of the Practice of Law Executive Director,...

Here’s your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has claimed responsibility for Friday's deadly attack on a U.N. police base in the northern Malian city of Timbuktu, a statement monitored by the SITE Intelligence group showed on Saturday. The Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders in Africa, Honourable Reine...

Announcements The GlobalTrust research project published a call for applications for post-doctoral fellowships for the academic year 2016-17. The GlobalTrust Research project at Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law is funded by a  European Research Council Advanced Grant, and studies the extent to which states that exercise regulatory functions should take into account the interests and preferences of foreign individuals and...

Sorry for the endless self-promotion, but I thought readers might be interested in the following episode of Al Jazeera's Inside Story, which includes a 30-minute panel on siege warfare in Syria that I participated in. It was quite a wide-ranging discussion, focusing less on international law than I expected. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fM8PwT9hz3c&feature=youtu.be As always, comments welcome! I hope readers don't think I was too...

Here’s your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa The African Union has decided against sending peacekeepers to crisis-hit Burundi after the embattled government said that any such move would be considered an invasion. Campaigners have called on Egypt to immediately release a 17-year-old Somali refugee who has been held for nearly six months. At least three...

There have been noises coming out Ukraine for years that its government was preparing an international legal action against Russia over Crimea.  It looks like Ukraine has finally prepared to pull the trigger. According to this report, Ukraine is ready to charge Russia with violating the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in the following ways. "First, the seizure of...

I had the pleasure of going on BBC World News a couple of days ago to discuss the opening of Laurent Gbagbo's trial at the ICC. The clip they sent me is very low quality; the sound isn't even synced correctly. But I'm posting it just in case anyone wants to hear what I had to say. It's about three...

The New York Times reported yesterday that Adolf Eichmann apparently wrote, by hand, an 11th-hour request to the Israeli President for a pardon of his conviction for crimes against humanity (or commutation of his death sentence). The request was denied and Eichmann was executed a few days later--the only execution ever carried out by the Israeli criminal justice system. The letter had been filed...

[Nader Diab is an Associate Legal Adviser at the International Commission of Jurists. LL.M Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. Twitter : @NaderiskDiab] In the GC the ACHPR reiterated its call for the abolition or imposition of a moratorium on the death penalty (for previous similar calls see two resolutions of the ACHPR on this issue here and here)....

[Valentina Azarova is a Research Fellow in the Institute of Law, Birzeit University. She has assisted and advised in the suits filed by Al-Haq against foreign corporations for involvement in abuses in occupied Palestinian territory and is a member of the legal committee, Global Legal Action Network (GLAN)]. On 19 January 2016, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released Occupation, Inc.: How Settlement...

[Jonathan Horowitz is a Legal Officer on National Security and Counterterrorism in the Open Society Justice Initiative. This post is based on his recently published article in Emory International Law Review, “Reaffirming the Role of Human Rights in a Time of “Global” Armed Conflict,” and will also appear in a longer form and under a different title in a forthcoming book, Theoretical Boundaries...