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Search: Syria Insta-Symposium

18 Apr

[Dr. Alex Mills is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Laws at University College London.] Although the Kiobel Court finds unanimously for the respondents, it is nevertheless predictably split (between the opinion of the Court, written by Chief Justice Roberts, and the concurrence led by Justice Breyer) when it comes to the reasons underlying that decision. One way of characterising this split is as a competition between two presumptions (as also noted previously by Anthony Colangelo and John H Knox in this ‘Insta-Symposium’). The first, the apparent foundation of the...
18.04.13 | |

03 Sep

For those still following along, an interesting array of views on the Syria situation in a conversation this afternoon on HuffPost Live, including Michael Scharf, Jules Lobel, Eric Posner, and yours truly. Would that the link went back a bit farther, you could listen in on a lively Miley Cyrus debate as well....
03.09.13 | |

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 not covered by Art. 8 is thus based on the removal of the explicit prohibition and the fact that it was thought that it would be the annex...
23.08.13 | |

16 Feb

...Documenting war and harsh reality of life, some Syrian media outlets are now based in Turkey informing those back home. For the past week, Turkish military forces have been shelling targets in northern Syria held by the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units, the armed wing of the Syrian Democratic Union Party, a group designated by Turkey as a terrorist organisation, leading to speculation about “ethnic cleansing.” Asia U.S. President Barack Obama and allies from Southeast Asia will turn their attention to China on Tuesday on the second day of a...
16.02.16 | |

06 Feb

Sorry for the endless self-promotion, but I thought readers might be interested in the following episode of Al Jazeera’s Inside Story, which includes a 30-minute panel on siege warfare in Syria that I participated in. It was quite a wide-ranging discussion, focusing less on international law than I expected. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fM8PwT9hz3c&feature=youtu.be As always, comments welcome! I hope readers don’t think I was too soft on either Assad or the UN…...
06.02.16 | |

10 Sep

Normally, we post our conference announcements weekly, but we just got word of one tomorrow that’s worth flagging. The British Institute of International and Comparative law (BIICL) will be holding a Rapid Response Seminar tomorrow, September 11, from 4-6 pm to discuss ‘Humanitarian Intervention, International Law and Syria’. As the title suggests, the conversation will discuss whether humanitarian intervention falls within the corpus of international law and, if so, whether it can be applied to the current Syrian situation. Robert McCorquodale (BIICL) will chair the panel, with scheduled speakers including...
10.09.13 | |

31 Jan

...self-defense against the non-state actor who is DPAA are not measures against the territorial state. Kevin Jon Heller The next time Syria uses a chemical weapon to defend itself against an armed attack, I look forward to your argument that Syria's "inherent right of self-defence" has "primacy" over its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention. Xavier @ Jordan: Would you apply the standard that you are invoking in your comment universally? For example, it is well known that CIA backed terrorists have organized attacks against Cuba from South Florida. One...
31.01.15 | |

30 Mar

Benjamin G. Davis One thing missing from his speech which I appreciate is any indication of what the Syrian dissidents want. There is a great emphasis on what we are doing to reassure all of us about what we are doing, but one question left unanswered is what the Syrians want us to do. We can then see whether this is feasible under international law and given the state of the UN Security Council. It would have been nice. As to the 9000 dead - it is very ironic to...
30.03.12 | |

22 Dec

Karen De Young and Missy Ryan have a long article today in the Washington Post about internal USG debates over the rules of engagement in Syria. It’s a very interesting and generally excellent article, but it contain one major error: International law allows for civilian casualties, even intentional ones, providing an action is within the bounds of distinction and proportionality, a somewhat subjective judgment that the military importance of the target is worth it. No, international law does not allow intentional civilian casualties. Intentionally attacking civilians violates IHL’s principle of...
22.12.15 | |

11 Apr

[Gabor Rona is a Visiting Professor of Law and Director of the Law and Armed Conflict Project at Cardozo Law School. Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights, Cardozo School of Law.] “It’s not war. We haven’t gone to war against Syria.” These are the quoted words of former legal advisor of the U.S. Department of State Harold Koh in a recent New Yorker article addressing the legality of the April 6 U.S. missile strike...
11.04.17 | |

03 Sep

Yes, according to Secretary of State John Kerry: Secretary of State John Kerry told House Democrats that the United States faced a “Munich moment” in deciding whether to respond to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government. In a 70-minute conference call on Monday afternoon, Kerry derided Syrian President Bashar Assad as a “two-bit dictator” who will “continue to act with impunity,” and he urged lawmakers to back President Barack Obama’s plan for “limited, narrow” strikes against the Assad regime, Democratic sources on the call said. Kerry’s...
03.09.13 | |

27 Sep

...disadvantage to this approach? We would need a new Syrian government to set up and carry out this proposed statute. And to get that new Syrian government, would we have to promise some sort of immunity to the old Syrian government that committed all those horrible crimes we want to prosecute? I agree in part: I think such discussions should be informal and as much as possible under the radar if only because knowledge of same by the Syrian regime simply adds another complicating variable to eventual resolution of this...
27.09.13 | |