There’s an interesting, if I suspect academic, discussion over at Just Security at the moment about whether the recent proposal by 51 State Department diplomats to use military force against the Assad regime directly would be lawful under domestic and/or international law. My suspicion that the discussion is at least at present academic is based on the unlikelihood that any such policy change is in the offing – particularly in this election year and, more important, in the context of the current President’s longstanding position that greater U.S. military force of this nature in Syria would be counterproductive. But academic at the moment or no, the questions are important and will certainly be faced early in the term of the administration that takes office in January 2017. And particularly on the international law side, the questions go to the heart of the larger issue of how much formal analysis one thinks international law in this area can bear. Marty Lederman and Ashely Deeks started the discussion
here, Harold Koh responded
here, and Charlie Savage has a good review of the way these debates unfolded in the administration considering the legality of the use of force in Libya and Syria
here. So
