[Lt Col R. Scott Adams is a US Air Force Judge Advocate. This article was written in his personal capacity and does not reflect any official position of the US Air Force or the US Government.] Jus contra bellum is the raison d’être of modern international law. When that regulation becomes impotent, prescriptions of conduct within war, jus in bello, emerge...
[Ashley S. Kinseth is an international human rights lawyer working on atrocity crimes and statelessness and a member of the Genocide Experts Working Group convened by Genocide Watch. She has conducted field research in Myanmar's Rakhine State and in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh and India.] In Part I, I described the elaborate system of permits, arbitrary taxes, village labor quotas, and...
[Ashley S. Kinseth is an international human rights lawyer working on atrocity crimes and statelessness and a member of the Genocide Experts Working Group convened by Genocide Watch. She has conducted field research in Myanmar's Rakhine State and in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh and India.] Rohingya fleeing Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State pay $300 to $500 for documents to get past Arakan...
[Flóra Merész is a Public International LL.M. graduate from Leiden University, a former intern in the ‘Regulation in the public interest: Disruptive technologies in peace and security’ strand of the T.M.C. Asser Institute, currently working as a Legal Fellow at Just Access e.V.] Deepfakes not only blur reality in our everyday life but also increasingly on the battlefield. From fake videos...
[Noah Sylvia is a Research Fellow for C4ISR and Emerging Tech at the Royal United Services Institute.] As advanced digitalised systems have become ubiquitous in modern warfare, the policy community primarily engages with these technologies through discussion of Decision Support Systems (DSS). DSS (or sometimes AI-DSS) encompass the range of digital systems used in decision-making processes, especially those incorporating some type...
[WANG Sijie is a LLM student at the London School of Economics specialising in public international law.] On 28 July 2026, the International Law Commission (ILC) adopted the Report of the Working Group on ‘Succession of States in Respect of State Responsibility’, and decided to terminate the work on the topic. (A/81/10 [94]) None of the documents produced during the process...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description (1-2 paragraphs) to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Calls for Submissions Cyber Law Toolkit: The Cyber Law Toolkit, an award-winning online resource on international law and cyber activities, invites proposals for new scenarios for its next general update, scheduled for September 2027. The Toolkit features a growing collection...
[Dr Emily Camins is a lecturer in international humanitarian law at the University of Western Australia Law School.] On 6 July 2026, a small AI-guided Russian drone crashed into a wall and exploded in the town of Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, killing 19-year-old university student Tetiana Bubynets, as well as Oleksiy Svirin, 41, and Roman Karpiy, 48. The drone had been programmed by...
[Dr. Pouria Askary is an Associate Professor of International Law at Allameh Tabataba’i University. Dr. Katayoun Hosseinnejad is an independent researcher and consultant.] On August 24, 2026, the U.S. Department of the Treasury launched a new economic campaign against Iran, which it described as targeting the country’s “lifelines”. The so called “Operation Economic Outcast” as reflected in the statement of the Secretary...
[Zachary Marcone is a U.S. lawyer and degree candidate at Stanford Law School.] On 9 October 2026, the United States sanctioned the International Criminal Court (ICC) as an institution. Although the United States previously sanctioned individual ICC prosecutors and judges, this is the first time it has specifically targeted the institution itself. The U.S. sanctions are an existential threat to the...
[Siobhán McInerney-Lankford is a human rights lawyer who serves as Head of Unit (Equality, Inclusion and Sustainability) and Legal Task Force Chair at the EU Fundamental Rights Agency. The opinions expressed in this piece are solely those of the author and should not be attributed to the EU FRA.] Introduction This post considers the ICJ Advisory Opinion on The Right to Strike...
[Gregory S. Gordon is Professor of Law at Peking University School of Transnational Law and author of Atrocity Speech Law: Foundation, Fragmentation, Fruition (Oxford University Press, 2017). A former prosecutor with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the U.S. Department of Justice, including in the Office of Special Investigations and as a Special...