I am pleased to announce that a new ILA Study Group on sanctions has been formed.  Larissa van den Herik and I will be working together, with the support of a group of sanctions scholars and practitioners, to address questions of individualization, formalization and interplay in multilateral sanctions.  Here are the three aims of the group:

• To evaluate the individualization and formalization of UN sanctions.

What are the pros, cons and interconnections of developments towards individualized and rules-based conceptions of UN sanctions? How targeted must targeting be and what are the risks of over-targeting and over-compliance?

• To examine how and in which circumstances UN sanctions regimes can be further (or less) individualized and formalized both in terms of their function as well as regarding procedural aspects.

In which areas of international law can UN sanctions play a role? Do different types of UN sanctions regimes correspond to different protected values and pursued interests? How are procedures and accountability models best organized?

• To reflect on coordination with other institutions.

What are the best forms of interplay and interaction with other institutions such as the International Criminal Court, ICTY, ICTR and national courts pursuing criminal accountability, and with other regional or sub-regional organizations that apply sanctions, such as the EU and AU?

The group aims to present its first report at the ILA meeting in Durban, 2016.

For those who follow sanctions, some other interesting events are coming up including a conference in London, details here.

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world:

Africa

• Malian rebels fought pro-government militia in the northern village of Kano overnight, three security sources said, firing rockets and briefly kidnapping at least 20 people in the latest spike of violence between armed groups.
• Chadian forces have killed 120 militants from Boko Haram in a battle in the north of neighbouring Cameroon that began when the insurgents attacked its troops, the army said in a statement on Saturday, adding that three of its soldiers were killed.
• Nigerians who fled from Boko Haram fighters have now become a headache for Chadian authorities after seeking safety across the border.
• Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has dismissed concerns that his appointment as new African Union chairman would harm relations between the pan-African bloc and the West.
• Suspected Boko Haram fighters have launched an offensive against the key Nigerian city of Maiduguri, the largest city in Borno State, witnesses said.

Middle East and Northern Africa

• At least 10 people have been killed in Yemen over the past four days in attacks led by an al Qaeda’s affiliate against Shi’ite Houthi fighters and the Yemeni army, local officials and the group said.
• Jordan has vowed to do all it can to save the life of a pilot held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) after the group released a video purportedly showing the killing of Japanese journalist Kenji Goto.
• A suspected U.S. drone strike on a car in Yemen killed three men believed to be al Qaeda militants on Saturday and possibly another drone crashed in a different part of the country, residents said.
• The United States and its allies carried out 27 air strikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria since early Friday, the Combined Joint Task Force leading the operation reported on Saturday.

Asia

• Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Monday he wanted to debate the possibility of Japan’s military rescuing Japanese citizens abroad, a day after Islamic State militants said they had beheaded a Japanese journalist.
• Thousands of pro-democracy protesters returned to the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday in the first large-scale rally since demonstrations rocked the global financial hub late last year.

Europe

• Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has struck a conciliatory note hours before Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis was due to seek support for a renegotiation of the country’s $270bn bailout in Paris.
• Artillery attacks on the Ukrainian city of Donetsk killed at least one civilian on Monday while Kiev’s military reported that five more Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in clashes with separatists in the east in the past 24 hours.
• The Appeals Chamber of the ICTY on Friday upheld genocide convictions [PDF] for Vujadin Popovic and Ljubisa Beara for crimes perpetrated by Bosnian Serb forces during the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

Americas

• North Korea said on Sunday the United States had rejected an invitation to send one of its top diplomats to Pyongyang, accusing Washington of trying to shift the blame for the deadlock in denuclearisation talks on the North.
• A district court held that environmental groups lack standing to challenge the U.S. Export-Import Bank’s approval of a $90 million loan guarantee that supports a three-year, $100 million loan from a private bank to a coal exporter.

Oceania

• Two Australian citizens are next in line to be executed for drug offences in Indonesia, the Southeast Asian nation’s attorney general said on Monday, in a move likely to strain ties between the neighbors. .

UN/World

• Fighting and other violence in Iraq killed at least 1,375 people including 790 civilians in January, the United Nations said on Sunday.
• UN chief Ban Ki-moon has backed an African Union (AU) proposal to send a regional force to fight Boko Haram in Nigeria, as warplanes from Chad carried out air strikes against the armed group.

Events

• The Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Program at Cardozo School of Law, Jacob Burns Foundation, Rutgers School of Law-Newark, and the Law & Humanities Institute invite you to a symposium at Cardozo School of Law and Rutgers School of Law titled “The Abolition of War” on February 20-21, 2015. More information is here.

Call for Papers

• The Goettingen Journal of International Law will dedicate Vol. 7 Issue No. 2 to the protection of the atmosphere in international law. The atmosphere is our planet’s largest single natural resource and is vital to the survival of humankind and any life on earth. Therefore, the degradation of the atmosphere’s condition has long been a matter of concern to large segments of the international community. In 2013, the United Nation’s International Law Commission (ILC) took up this issue. Several conventions regulate atmospheric and related issues, yet there is still no coherent legal framework addressing the protection of the atmosphere. The work by the ILC will be the first attempt to derive rules from the current practice of States addressing the atmosphere’s protection. However, the work by the ILC is significantly complicated by the restrained scope of the topic, as the Commission deliberately decided not to deal with, inter alia, questions of liability, the polluter-pays principle, and the principle of precaution. In order to foster and critically accompany the codification and progressive development of the law surrounding the protection of the atmosphere, the Goettingen Journal of International Law, one of Germany’s leading international law publications, will dedicate the second issue of its seventh volume to this topic. The Editors are therefore inviting authors to submit papers on this subject. Submissions from an international law background as well as other disciplines such as international relations, geography, earth sciences, etc. are welcome. Papers will be submitted to a double-blind peer review and should not exceed 15,000 words including footnotes. The deadline for submissions is July 15, 2015. For further information, please contact the Editors at info [at] gojil [dot] eu.

Announcements

• TDM Journal has issued a special issue on “The Pacific Rim and International Economic Law: Opportunities and Risks of the Pacific Century“. Edited by Mark Feldman (Peking University School of Transnational Law) and Wenhua Shan (Xi’an Jiaotong University) this TDM special addresses key issues facing the Pacific Rim region at a particularly opportune time: a moment when the Pacific Rim region is shaping, to a very significant extent, the international economic law architecture for the 21^st century. The special is introduced by J. Christopher Thomas, Q.C.
• PluriCourts is announcing a position as research professor in political science. More details are available here.

Our previous events and announcements post can be found here. If you would like to post an announcement on Opinio Juris, please contact us with a one-paragraph description of your announcement along with hyperlinks to more information. 

I am occasionally accused — correctly, of course — of using the blog as little more than a tool for shameless self-promotion. So it gives me great pleasure to use the blog as a tool of shameless other-promotion and announce the publication of Jens’s important new book, The Assault on International Law, now available from our friends at Oxford University Press. Here is the publisher’s description:

International law presents a conceptual riddle. Why comply with it when there is no world government to enforce it? The United States has long history of skepticism towards international law, but 9/11 ushered in a particularly virulent phase of American exceptionalism. Torture became official government policy, President Bush denied that the Geneva Conventions applied to the war against al-Qaeda, and the US drifted away from international institutions like the International Criminal Court and the United Nations.

Although American politicians and their legal advisors are often the public face of this attack, the root of this movement is a coordinated and deliberate attack by law professors hostile to its philosophical foundations, including Eric Posner, Jack Goldsmith, Adrian Vermeule, and John Yoo. In a series of influential writings they have claimed that since states are motivated primarily by self-interest, compliance with international law is nothing more than high-minded talk. Theses abstract arguments then provide a foundation for dangerous legal conclusions: that international law is largely irrelevant to determining how and when terrorists can be captured or killed; that the US President alone should be directing the War on Terror without significant input from Congress or the judiciary; that US courts should not hear lawsuits alleging violations of international law; and that the US should block any international criminal court with jurisdiction over Americans. Put together, these polemical accounts had an enormous impact on how politicians conduct foreign policy and how judges decide cases – ultimately triggering America’s pernicious withdrawal from international cooperation.

In The Assault on International Law, Jens Ohlin exposes the mistaken assumptions of these ‘New Realists,’ in particular their impoverished utilization of rational choice theory. In contrast, he provides an alternate vision of international law based on a truly innovative theory of human rationality. According to Ohlin, rationality requires that agents follow through on their plans even when faced with opportunities for defection. Seen in this light, international law is the product of nation-states cooperating to escape a brutish State of Nature—a result that is not only legally binding but also in each state’s self-interest.

I have had the pleasure of reading the book, and it’s tremendous. Many international-law scholars are (understandably) resistant to the caricature of international law presented by the Posners and Yoos of the world, but few have the theoretical chops to engage in the kind of imminent critique of “New Realism” that Jens provides. I hope the book gets the audience it deserves.

The Washington Post has a long article today about how Mossad and the CIA collaborated to blow up Hezbollah’s chief of international operations in 2008. Here are the key paragraphs:

On Feb. 12, 2008, Imad Mughniyah, Hezbollah’s international operations chief, walked on a quiet nighttime street in Damascus after dinner at a nearby restaurant. Not far away, a team of CIA spotters in the Syrian capital was tracking his movements.

As Mughniyah approached a parked SUV, a bomb planted in a spare tire on the back of the vehicle exploded, sending a burst of shrapnel across a tight radius. He was killed instantly.

The device was triggered remotely from Tel Aviv by agents with Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, who were in communication with the operatives on the ground in Damascus. “The way it was set up, the U.S. could object and call it off, but it could not execute,” said a former U.S. intelligence official.

The United States helped build the bomb, the former official said, and tested it repeatedly at a CIA facility in North Carolina to ensure the potential blast area was contained and would not result in collateral damage.

“We probably blew up 25 bombs to make sure we got it right,” the former official said.

The extraordinarily close cooperation between the U.S. and Israeli intelligence services suggested the importance of the target — a man who over the years had been implicated in some of Hezbollah’s most spectacular terrorist attacks, including those against the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the Israeli Embassy in Argentina.

The United States has never acknowledged participation in the killing of Mughniyah, which Hezbollah blamed on Israel. Until now, there has been little detail about the joint operation by the CIA and Mossad to kill him, how the car bombing was planned or the exact U.S. role. With the exception of the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden, the mission marked one of the most high-risk covert actions by the United States in recent years.

The article touches on the legality of Mughniyah’s killing, with the US arguing that it was a lawful act of self-defense under Art. 51 of the UN Charter and Mary Ellen O’Connell claiming that it was perfidy. Regular readers will anticipate my skepticism toward the former claim, and there is simply no support in IHL for the latter claim. Perfidy is an act “inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence.” Mossad and the CIA did nothing of the kind.

Mossad and the CIA did, however, violate the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings, which Israel ratified on 10 February 2003 and the US ratified on 26 June 2002. I don’t want to dwell on Mossad in this post; the analysis is the same as the one I provided here with regard to its assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. Instead, I want to focus on the US’s complicity in Mughniyah’s death.

To begin with, there is no question that the bombing itself qualifies as a prohibited act of terrorism under the Terrorist Bombing Convention. Here is the relevant definition, Art. 2(1):

1. Any person commits an offence within the meaning of this Convention if that person unlawfully and intentionally delivers, places, discharges or detonates an explosive or other lethal device in, into or against a place of public use, a State or government facility, a public transportation system or an infrastructure facility:

(a) With the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury; or

(b) With the intent to cause extensive destruction of such a place, facility or system, where such destruction results in or is likely to result in major economic loss.

Mughniyah’s killing satisfies this definition. The attack involved an “explosive device” and it was clearly intended to “cause death.” It also took place on a public street, which qualifies as a “place of public use” under Article 1(5) of the Terrorist Bombing Convention. Article 1(5) defines a place of public use as “those parts of any building, land, street, waterway or other location that are accessible or open to members of the public, whether continuously, periodically or occasionally.”

The CIA was also complicit in that prohibited act of terrorism, pursuant to Art. 2(3):

3. Any person also commits an offence if that person:

(a) Participates as an accomplice in an offence as set forth in paragraph 1 or 2; or

(b) Organizes or directs others to commit an offence as set forth in paragraph 1 or 2; or

(c) In any other way contributes to the commission of one or more offences as set forth in paragraph 1 or 2 by a group of persons acting with a common purpose; such contribution shall be intentional and either be made with the aim of furthering the general criminal activity or purpose of the group or be made in the knowledge of the intention of the group to commit the offence or offences concerned.

The language of Art. 2(3) easily encompasses the CIA’s involvement in Mughniyah’s death, given that the US admits the CIA built the bomb, helped track Mughniyah’s movements, and had the power to call off the attack.

The US will no doubt object to this analysis by arguing that the Terrorist Bombing Convention is intended to apply to bombings by terrorists, not bombings of terrorists. That objection would be valid had the US military been involved in the operation instead of the CIA. Justifiably or not, Article 19(2) of the Convention specifically permits acts that would otherwise qualify as terrorist bombing when they are committed by the military forces of a state:

2. The activities of armed forces during an armed conflict, as those terms are understood under international humanitarian law, which are governed by that law, are not governed by this Convention, and the activities undertaken by military forces of a State in the exercise of their official duties, inasmuch as they are governed by other rules of international law, are not governed by this Convention.

The CIA, however, does not qualify as the US’s “military forces” under the Terrorist Bombing Convention. Art. 1(4) specifically defines “military forces of a State” as “the armed forces of a State which are organized, trained and equipped under its internal law for the primary purpose of national defence or security, and persons acting in support of those armed forces who are under their formal command, control and responsibility.” The second provision does not apply, because there is no evidence the CIA was acting under the “formal command, control and responsibility” of the military when it participated in Mughniyah’s killing. And neither does the first provision: although there is no question that the CIA contributes to the US’s “national defence or security,” it is not an “armed force” under US “internal law.” According to 10 USC § 101, “[t]he term ‘armed forces’ means the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard.”

The bottom line: the CIA committed an act of terrorism — actual terrorism, not figurative terrorism — when it participated in blowing up Mughniyah. The US military has the right to kill terrorists with bombs; the CIA does not. There is no doctrine of “close enough” in the Terrorist Bombing Convention.

This week on Opinio Juris saw Deborah note the publication of current Guantanamo detainee Mohammedou Slahi’s diary and her review that appeared in the Washington Post about it. Peter offered further commentary on his first post on John Boehner’s invitation to Benjamin Netanyahu to address the US Congress, specifically in terms of what the invitation says about constitutional change.

Though he never met him in person, Julian noted the passing of Dr. Luke T. Lee, and paid homage to him and his treatise on Consular Law and Practice.

In light of the hostage situation between ISIS and Jordan/Japan, Jens weighed in on hostages and human dignity. Jens also reported on yesterday’s decision at the ICTY Appeals Chamber, upholding genocide charges in the case of The Prosecutor v. Popovic et al. related to the massacre at Srebrenica in July, 1995.

Duncan highlighted his newest paper, this time he’s written An Intersubjective Treaty Power and a guest post came in from Nimrod Karin, responding to Kevin’s critique of his Just Security posts (here and here), about whether Palestine’s joining the ICC amounted to “lawfare.”

And finally, I updated you on the weekly news and also offered the events and announcements post.

Many thanks to our guest contributor and have a nice weekend!

Today, the ICTY Appeals Chamber affirmed genocide convictions in the Srebrenica case, Prosecutor v. Popović et al. The full Appeals Chamber judgment is here.  The PDF document is 792 pages (including a few short dissents), which is long-ish but certainly not extraordinary by ICTY judgment standards.

In my opinion, the most critical part of the judgment relates to the connection between the defendants, their Joint Criminal Enterprise (JCE), and the perpetrators who actually performed the killings. As you will recall, back in the old days when the JCE doctrine was first brought to fruition in the Tadic case, the assumption was that the court would convict defendants who were part of the same JCE as the perpetrators who performed the actual killings. Later ICTY judgments “de-linked” leadership-level defendants from the relevant physical perpetrators and held that a conviction for JCE did not require that the defendants and the perpetrators were part of the same JCE. This opened up a big question: what link between the defendants and the perpetrators was required in order to convict under the JCE doctrine? Furthermore, what doctrine would justify imposing liability on the defendants when the JCE doctrine was insufficient by itself to establish the link between the defendants and the physical perpetrators. What standard would be used to evaluate the required link?  I was hoping that the Popović judgment would resolve these questions definitively, but it does not appear to have done so.

Here is the relevant paragraphs in the judgment regarding one set of killings:

1065. The Appeals Chamber observes that the Trial Chamber considered that the fact that killings occurred in July 1995, after the fall of Srebrenica, and that the victims were Bosnian Muslim men from Srebrenica, were sufficient to link the Trnovo killings to the common purpose of the JCE to Murder. The Prosecution correctly points out that the principal perpetrator of a given crime need not be a member of the JCE and that it must be determined whether the crime in question forms part of the common purpose. The Appeals Chamber reiterates that: to hold a member of a JCE responsible for crimes committed by non-members of the enterprise, it has to be shown that the crime can be imputed to one member of the joint criminal enterprise, and that this member – when using a principal perpetrator – acted in accordance with the common plan. The Appeals Chamber does not consider the Trial Chamber’s finding to satisfy this requirement. The Appeals Chamber, Judge Niang dissenting, therefore finds that the Trial Chamber’s failure to further elaborate on this link amounts to a failure to provide a reasoned opinion. In view of the Trial Chamber’s error of law, the Appeals Chamber will consider whether the factual findings in the Trial Judgement as a whole would allow a reasonable trier of fact to establish a link between the members of the Scorpions Unit and a member of the JCE to Murder.

1066. Although insufficient on their own to establish a link, the Appeals Chamber notes that the Trnovo killings share certain features with other crimes committed in furtherance of the common plan, namely that the victims were Bosnian Muslim men from Srebrenica, the killings occurred “in July 1995, after the fall of Srebrenica”, and the victims were lined up and shot with automatic rifles.

1067. As previously discussed, one way to establish the required link would be to demonstrate that in the lead up to the Trnovo killings, the Scorpions Unit co-operated with the VRS, either directly or through the MUP forces, with respect to the custody or control of the prisoners killed in Trnovo. In this regard, the Prosecution asserts it is reasonable to infer that the Bosnian Muslim men killed in Trnovo were captured by or surrendered to the BSF who then handed them over to the Scorpions Unit. The Appeals Chamber observes, however, that the Trial Chamber, having considered and rejected similar arguments, concluded that “₣ağny inference that there was coordination with the VRS Main Staff is speculation”. In reaching this conclusion, the Trial Chamber rejected the Prosecution’s arguments that: (1) the Bosnian Muslim men were arrested in the Drina Corps’ zone of responsibility; (2) the logistics of their transport would have required VRS Main Staff involvement; and (3) the Scorpions Unit would have been unable to take any actions without orders from the BSF and the MUP in Trnovo. The Trial Chamber also took into consideration that it was not presented with evidence: (1) indicating that the six men were detained in the Drina Corps’ zone of responsibility; (2) shedding light on the men’s journey from Srebrenica to the Trnovo area; or (3) indicating that there was any VRS Main Staff involvement in the six men coming into the custody of the Scorpions Unit. The Appeals Chamber is not persuaded that the Trial Chamber’s conclusion – that to infer co-ordination between the Scorpions Unit and the VRS Main Staff would be speculative – is undermined by either the evidence that the six Trnovo victims were last seen along the route of the column between Bratunac and Nova Kasaba, or that other Bosnian Muslim men from the column were captured by or surrendered to the BSF stationed along the Bratunac-Konjevi} Polje Road.

1068. In submitting that the Scorpions Unit and MUP forces were closely co-ordinated during the relevant time period, the Prosecution relies on evidence that demonstrates that: (1) the Scorpions Unit was deployed in Trnovo from late June through at least the end of July 1995; (2) on 1 July 1995, Borovcanin reported on activities on the Trnovo battlefield, including on an attack involving the Scorpions Unit; (3) Borovcanin was in Trnovo on the Sarajevo front until he was resubordinated on 10 July 1995; (4) a mixed company of joint Republic of Serbian Krajina (“RSK”), Serbian and RS MUP forces was among the units under Borovcanin’s command when he was resubordinated and that during the night of 10 July 1995 this mixed company was to withdraw from the Trnovo battlefield and assemble in front of the Public Security Station (“SJB”) in Bratunac by noon the following day; and (5) upon arrival in Bratunac, Borovcanin was to report to Krstic.3113 This circumstantial evidence suggests that Borovcanin worked with the Scorpions Unit and the VRS Sarajevo-Romanija Corps while he was in Trnovo. However, when considered alongside the Trial Chamber’s finding that the only evidence about the whereabouts of the mixed company of joint RSK, Serbian, and RS MUP forces after re-subordination was that they did not arrive in Bratunac,the Appeals Chamber is not persuaded that the only reasonable inference available was that Borovcanin continued to co-ordinate with the Scorpions Unit after he was re-subordinated on 10 July 1995. The Appeals Chamber further emphasises that the killings were committed in Trnovo, which although only 150 kilometres from Zvornik, falls within the area of responsibility of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps, rather than the area of responsibility of the Drina Corps like the other crimes. Finally, with respect to the Prosecution’s argument that the BSF continued to search for ABiH soldiers and to capture and kill smaller groups of Bosnian Muslim men fleeing from Srebrenica even after the mass killings were complete, the Appeals Chamber considers that although it demonstrates the continued implementation of the murder operation, it is of limited relevance in showing a link between the Scorpions Unit and a JCE member. The Appeals Chamber, Judge Niang dissenting, therefore considers that a reasonable trier of fact could not have established a link between the members of the Scorpions Unit and a member of the JCE to Murder.

1069. In light of these considerations, the Appeals Chamber, Judge Niang dissenting, considers that a reasonable trier of fact could not have concluded that the members of the JCE were responsible for the Trnovo killings. The Appeals Chamber, Judge Niang dissenting, therefore grants in part Beara’s ground of appeal 17 and Popovic’s appeal in this regard, and reverses their convictions under the following counts to the extent they concern the Trnovo killings: Count 1 (genocide); Count 3 (extermination as a crime against humanity); Count 5 (murder as a violation of the laws or customs of war); and Count 6 (persecution as a crime against humanity).

I do not have an opinion regarding the sufficiency of the evidence and whether the Appeals Chamber should have imputed the killings to the defendants in this case. Rather, I am concerned that the Appeals Chamber did not do enough to establish a particular standard or doctrine to “re-link” perpetrators with killings performed by individuals outside of the JCE. There is nothing close to a standard announced here, but rather the Chamber simply reasserts that there must be some connection in order to justify the imputation. Well yes, but what criminal law doctrine structures that imputation? To me it’s a bit like saying that a defendant in a criminal trial can be punished for someone else’s killing as long as there was some coordination between them, but without specifying whether the defendant is an accomplice, conspirator, instigator, or whatever.

The Chamber performs a fact-intensive inquiry into the matter without any particular doctrine or mode of liability to aid the analysis. It does say that cooperation or coordination would be “one way to establish the link,” and that there was insufficient evidence of such cooperation or coordination in this case. OK, but does that mean that a link could be established in some other way? And if so, what is the overall Dogmatik justification for imputing the criminal actions of non-members to members of the JCE?

Again, I’m not objecting to the result in this case, but rather questioning whether the Appeals Chamber has answered the necessary doctrinal questions and whether they have given sufficient guidance to further Trial Chambers. The results here seem decidedly fact-dependent and, shall we say, under-theorized. 

Ian Henderson may be mad at me.  He asked for fewer posts on foreign relations.  But he also asked for more posts on treaties.  I have a new paper up that tackles both topics — An Intersubjective Treaty Power.  For those of you who are interested in such things, here’s the abstract:

Does the Constitution require that U.S. treaties address matters of international concern? For decades, conventional wisdom answered that question negatively; The Restatement (Third) of U.S. Foreign Relations Law dismissed the very existence of an international concern test. In Bond v. United States, however, three Justices – Alito, Thomas, and Scalia – insisted on its existence, pushing the issue into the foreground of foreign relations law.

This article analyzes whether the Constitution contains an international concern test and what contours it has. I argue that Justices Alito, Scalia and Thomas are correct – and the Restatement (Third) was wrong – on the test’s existence. Various modalities of constitutional interpretation – original meaning, historical practice, doctrine, structure, and prudence – offer evidence supporting some version of an international concern test. But I part ways with the Justices on how the test works. They and other proponents have tended to look for static or objective criteria to divide appropriate “international” matters from impermissible “purely domestic” ones.

In contrast, I argue that the international concern test is intersubjective. U.S. treaties can only be formed (or ratified, implemented, or applied) where the relevant actors at each stage (e.g., States in forming a treaty, the President and the Senate in ratifying it) share a belief that its subject-matter is international. Absent that understanding, the treaty will not be formed (or ratified, or implemented, or applied). Such views may coincide or divide depending on the context. Thus, the Supreme Court could agree that the Chemical Weapons Convention generally addressed a matter of international concern, even if they also agreed that the prosecution of Ms. Bond did not. Nor are these understandings fixed; issues need not be “purely” domestic (or international) for all time. Some topics such as human rights were once understood by States (and the President and the Senate) to be inappropriate subjects for treaty-making, but are now believed to be an essential aspect of international relations. Other topics such as Native American relations were once subject to extensive treaty treatment, but are now no longer accepted as appropriate subjects for U.S. treaties.

This article thus answers one of the longest running questions of U.S. foreign relations law. It confirms the existence of an international concern test, but locates its operation within the treaty process rather than in an externally-imposed laundry list of topics or criteria. In doing so, it provides an explanatory lens for a U.S. treaty practice that many label incoherent and suggests a need for more research on what conditions generate intersubjectivity (or its absence).

News reports indicate that Jordan is engaged in frantic negotiations with the Islamic State (ISIS) over a proposed hostage swap. Jordan is apparently willing to turn over a prisoner, would-be suicide bomber Sajida al-Rishawi, in exchange for ISIS releasing both a Jordanian air force pilot and a Japanese captive. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, the deal appears to have collapsed.

Earlier video appeared to show that another Japanese hostage was murdered by ISIS–a development that provoked shock and outrage in Japan. ISIS hostage-takers had earlier demanded $200 million from the Japanese government in exchange for releasing the two Japanese nationals. Although Japan is not militarily engaged in the armed conflict against ISIS, the terrorist organization said that its actions were motivated by the financial assistance that Japan had pledged to the regional effort, though Japan clarified that the financial assistance was for non-military efforts. Unfortunately, that clarification did not dissuade ISIS from continuing to threaten the life of the remaining hostage.

It is unclear what policy Japan is following regarding negotiating with ISIS generally and paying ransom demands specifically.

The United States and Britain have explicit policies against paying ransom to ISIS or other terrorist organizations. Consequently, while many captives from other European countries have been released after their governments paid ransoms to ISIS, several U.S. and British hostages have been brutally beheaded because their governments refused to negotiate or give money to ISIS to win their release. This has caused anguish for the families of the hostages.

In this post, I don’t want to address the normative question of whether it is best (morally or strategically) to pay a ransom. Of course, paying the ransom wins the release of the individual hostage. However, it also emboldens and encourages ISIS and other terrorists to perpetrate more kidnappings. It is precisely for this reason that the U.S. refuses to negotiate and pay money to ISIS.  The ransom payments are bankrolling the ISIS war in Iraq and Syria. So the European countries that are paying the ransoms are providing (indirectly and under duress) the resources for ISIS to fight the military coalition that is trying to stop them from carving its caliphate out of the territory of Iraq and Syria.

Rather, I want to ask the descriptive question of why most European governments are willing to pay the ransoms while the U.S. and Britain will not.  Both sides of this issue understand the pragmatic consequences. So why the different conclusions?

I have spent a long time thinking of the question and the only answer i can find is: human dignity. The U.S. and British position sacrifices the interests of the individual hostage in order to serve a larger social goal: denying ISIS the financial resources to continue its military campaign. This is a consequentialist calculation. The problem is that it is not so good for the individual hostage.

European governments care about the lives of the hostages and are willing to save them, even though they know that saving them will make the overall situation worse, both for the global community as well as their own citizens will inevitably be taken hostage again. But they are unwilling to balance away the interests of the hostage for some larger societal interest. This preservation of, and respect for, human dignity is deeply entrenched in some European legal cultures. For example, article 1 of the German Constitution says that human life is inviolable and cannot be balanced away. Utilitarian balancing is impermissible as a matter of constitutional law if it violates the human dignity of the individual, who is entitled to moral and legal respect. This means that the life of the hostage cannot be subordinated to the global interests that are advanced by the policy of non-negotiation.

Of course, one caveat here. The cause of the hostage’s peril stems from an outside agent (ISIS), not the government. So the government is not directly harming the hostage by not paying the ransom. This makes the situation much different from the German Airliner case, where the German courts concluded that authorizing the shooting down of a hijacked airliner would be unconstitutional because it would violate the human dignity of the innocent passengers. In that situation, the passengers would have been killed by the German government, while in the case of the hostages, their deaths would be caused by ISIS, not their own government. This is a relevant difference, both morally and legally.

That being said, I still think that, as a descriptive matter, the commitment to human dignity and moral individualism is at play in the background here. For some European governments, as well as their domestic populations exerting political pressure on them, the interests of individual citizens cannot be dismissed simply because a larger social policy requires doing something different. For some European governments, that social policy sounds particularly cold because it indirectly ends up condemning the individual hostages. The question is why these governments think this result would be cold. And I think the reason why is because the commitment to Kantian dignity is more deeply engrained in some legal cultures than others.

I never met the late Luke T. Lee, but his work, Consular Law and Practice, was one of the first treatises on “practical” international law I ever encountered. As a young student intern in the U.S. State Department, I remember going to his book again and again as I tried to figure out exactly what would happen to a U.S. consular official who got into a car accident in Jerusalem but whose consular status was never properly recognized by the government of Israel (There is a memo I wrote on this subject somewhere in the bowels of the State Department that may or may not ever have been read).  Lee’s work was not breathtakingly complex or sophisticated, but it was clear, careful, and comprehensive on the questions it set for itself. Works like Consular Law and Practice are not the only purpose of writing legal scholarship, but it is a purpose that is still worth celebrating.  RIP.

My earlier post on whether John Boehner’s invitation to Benjamin Netanyahu seems to have triggered a little in-house conservative disagreement on the issue (or at least Weekly Standard’s Adam J. White is giving me credit for that). Mike Ramsey and David Bernstein come out against the invite’s constitutionality here and here; White argues in favor.

As I left off my first post, the question is appropriately raised but I think ultimately the Boehner move will go down as policy stupid but constitutionally legitimate. Appropriately raised because the invitation seems so patently at odds with a “one voice”/”sole organ” approach to foreign relations. Nice to have Mike Ramsey to confirm that the Founding generation wouldn’t have bought in (though Ryan Scoville dissents on the historical record here). But it would have provoked a huge controversy in the 20th century as well — see the much more informal interaction between Jim Wright and the Sandinistas during the Reagan years. Imagine if Wright had invited Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega to address Congress. I think a lot of folks would have deployed constitutional objections to that.

But just because it may have been unconstitutional then doesn’t mean it’s unconstitutional now.

The fact that it was left to a niche blogger to raise the constitutional question this time around pretty much proves the fact that this is now water under the constitutional bridge. There’s no way to put the lid on direct communication between members of Congress and foreign government officials. So much for “one voice.” One has to assume such communications are now dense. Making the jump from lots of behind-the-scenes contact to more formal actions like the Boehner invitation looks small. One might even argue that it is transparency enhancing. Better to play the institutional cards openly than hide them under the table. (Adam White highlights similar activity on the part of the courts, including the increasing amicus practice of foreign states. That practice would have raised a lot of eyebrows as recently as a couple of decades ago, especially on domestic issues; it’s now pretty routine.)

So the episode is a nice illustration of how changes in context can change constitutional understandings. Assuming the constitutional debate on the Boehner move remains restricted to a side conversation among constitutional scholars, it will supply a good precedent for similar moves on Congress’ part in the future. The practice then becomes constitutionally entrenched, accepted by all relevant actors. Any earlier understandings (including ones dating back to the founding) are overtaken by events. Th Constitution necessarily adapts to the world in which it has to operate.