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Regions

31 Aug

[Ian Hurd is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University. This contribution is cross-posted at the Ethics and International Affairs Blog.] The debate sparked by Syria’s chemical weapons attack last week includes at least three separate controversies: 1) which (if any) international legal instruments govern Syria’s use of chemical weapons; 2) whether outside military action against the Syrian regime...

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31 Aug

[Jennifer Trahan is an Associate Clinical Professor, NYU Center for Global Affairs, chair of the American Branch of the International Law Association International Criminal Court Committee, and member of the American Bar Association 2010 ICC Task Force] As the U.S. prepares, with or without coalition partners, for a potential military strike against the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria , it is important to consider the...

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31 Aug

We have invited several academic luminaries to post here at Opinio Juris over the next few days about the ongoing situation in Syria. We also are going to follow in our own footsteps from our Kiobel symposium, by inviting young academics and practitioners to submit guests posts for possible publication. We can’t guarantee we will publish every post submitted, but we...

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30 Aug

Good thing nothing much happened while I was away on summer vacation… So as I wrote here last spring, there’s no clear basis under international law for a U.S. use of force in Syria – no UN Security Council resolution, and no apparent claim at this stage that the United States is acting in self-defense. The only theory of legality in play seems to be the one put forward by the British government, right before Parliament voted to reject the use of force in Syria. Namely, that force may be justified as part of an emergent customary norm permitting humanitarian intervention (see, e.g., NATO intervention in Kosovo). The statement from the UK Prime Minister’s Office says a state may take “exceptional measures in order to alleviate the scale of the overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe in Syria by deterring and disrupting the further use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime. Such a legal basis is available, under the doctrine of humanitarian intervention, provided” a set of conditions hold. Those conditions: (1) “convincing evidence, generally accepted by the international community as a whole, of extreme humanitarian distress on a large scale, requiring immediate and urgent relief;” (2) it is “objectively clear that there is no practicable alternative to the use of force if lives are to be saved;” (3) the force used is “necessary and proportionate to the aim of relief of humanitarian need…” But it just can’t support U.S. action here. Here’s why.
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29 Aug

It might be premature to declare the death of the doctrine of humanitarian intervention under international law, but there is no doubt that doctrine suffered a massive blow when the British Parliament voted against a preliminary motion in favor of military strikes on Syria.  To be sure, humanitarian intervention was not directly before the Parliament, but the UK government's international...

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27 Aug

Yes, the title is intended to be provocative. And yes, I think chemical weapons are indeed terrible. But statements like this -- offered by John Kerry in thinly-veiled support for using military force against the Syrian government -- still give me pause (emphasis mine): What we saw in Syria last week should shock the conscience of the world. It defies any...

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26 Aug

[Drew F. Cohen is a law clerk to the Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.  He is also a contributing columnist for US News and World Report where he writes about comparative constitutional law, international human rights and global legal affairs.] Recently, Botswana called on the South African Development Community (SADC) to open an investigation into voting irregularities in the recent Presidential election in Zimbabwe...

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24 Aug

Although the government of Colombia was far from pleased when the ICJ issued a judgment last November in a long-running territorial dispute with Nicaragua, it did not go so far as to say it would simply ignore the ruling.  But Colombia's vice president Angelino Garzon seems to be hinting in recent comments that Colombia is prepared to do just that. “The...

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23 Aug

My friend Dapo Akande has a superb post at EJIL: Talk! discussing whether the ICC could prosecute the use of chemical weapons by the government in Syria. I agree almost entirely with Dapo's analysis, but I do want to offer a couple of thoughts about his discussion of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties: The argument that chemical weapons are...

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