Search: crossing lines
26 Apr Israel, Gaza, and the End of “Effective Control”
...– a cargo terminal closed for security after Hamas’s 2007 takeover, Erez (north) – the only pedestrian crossing, and Rafah (south) – the sole major crossing point into Egypt, currently controlled by Egypt and Hamas. After disengagement, Israel and the PA signed the Agreement on Movement and Access (“AMA”) – giving the Palestinians and Egypt control over Rafah and allowing increased traffic through the Erez and Karni crossings – and the Agreed Principles for Rafah Crossing (“APRC”), which elaborates on the AMA. The APRC required a third party to monitor...
03 Oct The Agreement Between the UK and France on the Prevention of Dangerous Journeys
...illegal crossing before – subject to full documentation and security and eligibility checks.’ As the Agreement entered into force, Channel crossings in small boats by persons seeking to claim international protection in the United Kingdom were continuing at a high level- official figures released on 11 August 2025 confirmed that more than 50,000 people had made the journey since July 2024, up from some 36,000 in the preceding twelve months. It continues to be dangerous and in some cases lethal-at least 20 people are recorded as having died in connection...
01 Nov Conversation on WAR
...peace-keeping commander saying there was too much confusion about what it meant to move from peace-keeping to war fighting. He calls it ‘crossing the Mogadishu line’ and claimed that crossing that line was to the detriment of the peacekeepers and the people of Somalia. So talking about war or war fighting can be a signifier: moving from engaging in the use of force for a certain limited end i.e. to deliver food in Somalia or protect civilians, to something where your limited mission is seemingly put aside and you put...23 Sep Book Symposium: Cyber War – A Duty to Hack and the Boundaries of Analogical Reasoning
...(including the potential for it to incentivize greater military cyber surveillance to solidify the reliability of various cyber capabilities). In doing this analysis, however, I was struck by the larger challenges of using analogies to carve out the existing lines of IHL in cyberspace (not to mention the contours of any new lines that I propose). As a result, I ended up framing my chapter around a larger, introductory analysis of the role of boundaries in legal discourse over cyberspace. Readers may be familiar with debates over whether cyberspace is...12 May Guest Post: Strong Words, Weak Arguments – A Response to the Open Letter to the UN on Humanitarian Access to Syria (Part 1)
...IHL. International Humanitarian Law The letter frames its claims on the following argument: “International humanitarian law is unequivocal that where a civilian population is in need of life-saving aid, impartial humanitarian action ‘shall be undertaken’. In order to protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states, international law requires impartial humanitarian actors to seek the consent of the parties concerned. In February 2014, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2139 demanding that all parties, in particular the Syrian authorities, allow rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian access across conflict lines...06 Nov Bodansky: Update from Barcelona Climate Change Negotiations
...mechanisms (possibly including new rules for the CDM and for land-use change), and capacity-building. Given the current state of the negotiations (which remain bogged down), an outcome along these lines remains a very ambitious objective for Copenhagen, even if it is reflected “only” in COP decisions rather than in a new legal agreement. How much does the legal status of the Copenhagen outcome matter? For years, academics have been debating the merits of “soft” vs. “hard” law. Now, this issue has moved front and center in the climate negotiations. Coming...
14 Dec The Unconscious Lightness of Play: On Research and International Law
[David Matyas is a PhD Candidate and Gates Cambridge Scholar at the University of Cambridge, Lauterpacht Centre for International Law whose research focuses on the laws of humanitarian assistance. Before turning to law, he worked as an aid worker focusing on disaster risk, with placements in Niger and Senegal.] Each year, as the holidays roll around in winter and summer, I’m reminded of a few lines by US Supreme Court Associate Justice Louis D. Brandeis to a young lawyer at his firm. He writes, “The bow must be strung and...
30 Oct Third Annual Symposium on Pop Culture and International Law: Three Tales of Omelas – Utopia, Harm and International Law
...Mathias Thaler in his recent book, No Other Planet (2022), calls these flaws “fault-lines”. For Thaler, these fault-lines are an essential part of the utopian method. They force the reader to reflect, and probe the utopian project they are being presented with. Such faults and cracks are a common feature of critical utopias as they prompt interrogation of what is meant by utopia, highlight the contingency of the present in the fictional narrative, and open up future potentialities. Utopianism, then, is not just about some utopian destination or place, it...
23 Dec Symposium on Classism and the International Legal Profession: Three Tactics against Classism in the Epistemic Community of International Law
...and critique of international law and lawyers cannot remain blind to the inherent limitations of each scheme taken in isolation from the general critical corpus. For example, such concepts as Third World, Global South, gender, race, etc., are all arrows of a greater critical quiver that seeks to uncover the trajectories of subjugation, domination, oppression, and exclusion that the prevailing narratives of international law and international lawyers have promoted, defended, facilitated, and consolidated from the discipline’s founding until our days. Without losing sight of the nuances of each exegesis, we...01 Aug When Does the Combatant’s Privilege Apply?
...and (3)). Please see the Yale J. Int'l L. article and our Int'l Crim. Law casebook, chpt. on the laws of war, re: Quirin. Howard Gilbert The Qurin offense is passing through lines without uniform. That is, the Qurin defendents took off their uniforms and in civilian clothes pretending to be civilians they passed through US lines of defense and moved around in our unprotected rear areas. This is an offense against the laws of war that renders them unlawful belligerents and strips them of their combatant immunity. Such people...