Russia has skillfully managed to devote military support to the separatists in Eastern Ukraine. Just how much support -- and what kind of support -- is unclear, since Russia formally denies that they are directly involved in the ongoing hostilities there. Ukrainian officials have insisted that they have specific proof that Russian troops and their equipment have not only crossed the...
It looks like President Obama learned his lesson. Last summer he decided to seek Congress's advance approval for a strike against Syria's chemical weapons capabilities. Political support for the operation evaporated. Obama looked weak and waffly (the decision was taken on a dime after a 45-minute South Lawn stroll with chief of staff Denis McDonough, almost certainly not vetted through...
In the first part of my response to Bobby, I argued (after meandering around a bit) that Title 50's "fifth function" provision cannot be used to authorise the CIA to kill Americans overseas -- a necessary condition of any argument that the CIA is entitled to a public-authority justification with regard to 18 USC 1119, the foreign-murder statute. (Bobby kindly responds here.) I...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Rebels of the Somali Islamist group al Shabaab have pledged allegiance to their new leader after his predecessor was killed and said their enemies would reap the "bitter fruits" of revenge after Ahmed Godane's killing, a spokesman said. Boko Haram militants early on Saturday attacked another town in...
Call for papers The Faculty of Law of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Columbia Law School invite the submission of written proposals for an international conference on the international law legacies of the Palestine mandate, to be held in Jerusalem on June 21-22, 2015, and for a subsequent publication. The full call for papers can be found here. Researchers interested in addressing these and related...
My friend Bobby Chesney has responded at Lawfare to my previous post arguing that Title 50 does not provide the CIA with a public-authority justification to kill Americans overseas. He disagrees with both of the limits on presidential authority to authorise covert action I discussed. I will address the Article II question in a separate post; in this post I want...
As predicted last week, it was only a matter of time before someone on the Hill dropped a bill to terminate the citizenship of Americans who are fighting with the Islamic State. Ted Cruz has taken the plunge, so it will probably get a little more attention than if some backbencher had adopted the cause. Press statement here; text of...
As I noted in my previous post, my co-blogger Deborah Pearlstein has suggested that a covert operation authorised by the President under Title 50 of the US Code could function as the CIA's equivalent to the AUMF in terms of its authority to kill an American citizen overseas. Here is what she has argued: Here, even if the AUMF was not meant to...
In late June, I wrote a long post responding to the notorious memorandum in which the OLC attempted to provide a legal justification for killing Anwar al-Awlaki. I argued that although the AUMF likely provides the US military with a public-authority justification for violating 18 USC 1119, the foreign-murder statute, it does not and cannot provide the CIA with that justification. In defence of that conclusion,...
This week on Opinio Juris, we welcomed Jens Ohlin to our masthead. Kevin asked whether it's time to reconsider the al-Senussi admissibility decision, linked to a Rolling Stone article about Chevron and the Lago Agrio case, and criticized attempts to assess the proportionality of an attack based on combatant:civilian kill ratios. There was more on the Gaza Conflict in a guest post by Liron Libman,...
My friends at Matrix Chambers have asked me to post the following job announcement, for established practitioners in international law: Founded in 2000 to meet the complex challenges of law in the 21st century, Matrix Chambers has 70 members and 7 associate members supported by a dynamic and modern staff team. We have offices in London and Geneva. Individual members of Matrix Chambers...
Anyone familiar with foreign relations law hears the common refrain that treaties almost never supersede statutes under the last-in-time rule. Until recently, it was certainly my understanding that the ancient Supreme Court case of Cook v. United States was the only significant example in which a self-executing treaty trumped an earlier conflicting statute. But my recent research on the...
