Benjamin Soloway at Foreign Policy magazine thrilled me last week when he called to set up an interview for this story on the worst treaties ever. Simply put, I love treaties and I love lists. After all, a few years back I started a discussion on the most important treaties ever. But, having given a lot of thought to my top...
13 of the 15 members of the UN Security Council met yesterday to address LGBT issues for the first time in a closed session chaired by Chile and the US. The focus was on persecution of gays in Syria and Iraq. As an Arria-formula meeting, the discussion was confidential, however news reports after indicate the group discussed the Islamic State’s...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Suspected Boko Haram militants ambushed a convoy carrying Nigeria's chief of army staff on a tour of towns in troubled Borno state, the army said early on Sunday. Middle East and Northern Africa The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has blown up a 2,000-year-old temple...
A few months ago, I blogged about the OTP's attempt to invoke Regulation 55 in Laurent Gbagbo's trial. As I noted in that post, the OTP asked the Trial Chamber (TC) to consider convicting Laurent Gbagbo of various crimes against humanity on the basis of command and superior responsibility, even though the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) specifically refused to confirm those modes of liability because doing so “would require...
The journal has published what has to be the most ridiculous article in the history of IHL scholarship. And no, I'm not being hyperbolic. Written by someone named William C. Bradford, identified -- terrifyingly -- as an "Associate Professor of Law, National Security, and Strategy, National Defense University, Washington, D.C," it's entitled "Trahison des Professeurs: The Critical Law of Armed Conflict...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa South Sudanese President Salva Kiir has arrived in Addis Ababa for peace talks aimed at brokering an end to the country's civil war, reversing an earlier decision as international threats of possible sanctions mount. Fraught with logistic and security concerns journalists have struggled to report on Boko Haram's...
Regular readers might remember a debate here and at Just Security (links here) in which I and a number of others debated whether it was perfidious for Mossad to use a booby-trapped civilian SUV to kill Imad Mughniyah, Hezbollah's intelligence chief, in a Damascus suburb. I am pleased to announce that International Law Studies, the official journal of the US Naval War College,...
My colleague Anne Orford has just received -- and deservedly so -- a very significant Australian Laureate Fellowship for a program entitled Civil War, Intervention, and International Law. The program is funded by the Australian Research Council from 2015 to 2020 and will establish an interdisciplinary research team based at Melbourne Law School. Here is a snippet from the description of the program: Professor Orford’s...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Somalia's Puntland region needs more help from the central government and the African Union to fight al Shabaab militants, especially equipment and ammunition, the president of the semi-autonomous region has said. Suspected Boko Haram gunmen killed four people on Sunday in a road ambush in Nigeria's restive northeastern...
Today, the American Psychological Association formally voted to end their enrollment in national security interrogations. This would seem to finally put an end to the organization's involvement in post-9/11 torture against security detainees. The vote comes on the heels of the Hoffman Report, which was prepared by attorney David Hoffman of Sidley Austin LLP. Hoffman was hired by the APA to...
As others have already noted, D.C. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth held last week that because “fighting continues” between U.S., Taliban and Al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo may still be detained under the domestic statute (AUMF) authorizing their detention. I’ve written here and elsewhere about the propriety of the underlying legal theory in...
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that President Obama has authorized U.S. military forces to use air power to defend U.S.-trained Syrian rebels if those rebels are attacked by the Syrian government forces. President Barack Obama has authorized using air power to defend a new U.S.-backed fighting force in Syria if it is attacked by Syrian government forces or other groups,...
