In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Search: jens iverson

02 Jul

I have filed an amicus brief in the Al Bahlul case. Al Bahlul was charged and convicted before a military commission for multiple offenses including conspiracy. On appeal, several of the charges were thrown out, but the conspiracy conviction remains and is the subject of his cert petition before the U.S. Supreme Court. Although the government once held the position that conspiracy is an offense under the international law of war, the government eventually switched legal theories and argued that conspiracy is a domestic law offense triable before...
02.07.17 | |

10 Dec

Right now we are locked in a complex dispute over the claims in the SSCI Torture Report that the CIA’s torture program was ineffective (as well as illegal). Part of the dispute can be frustrating because I think we are conflating a number of more distinct questions when we ask whether the torture was effective or not. Consider the following article from John Yoo who says that the torture report should be confined to the “dustbin” of history because it is inaccurate. He claims that torturing the detainees...
10.12.14 | |

23 Feb

Just a minute ago, President Obama announced yet again his intention and desire to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. There are no particular surprises here. From what I heard listening to his comments, the plan is merely a renewed push to get Congress to cooperate on closing the prison. Specifically, Obama suggested that the detainees who cannot be released should be transferred to a domestic facility, though he declined to specify which one. Obama made several points in defense of this plan. He conceded that some...
23.02.16 | |

26 Jan

...takes the sovereignty/non-intervention approach as explained before the recent US practice did not follow it and rightly so as there are still discussions on the absence of coercion (see ICJ Nicaragua case para. 205) in election interference (see Prof. Michael Schmitt here, here and here). So this leaves countermeasures out of the picture. If we take the self-determination approach presented by Prof. Jens Ohlin then the Russian action during the 2016 might have violated international law because in the election process opinions where disseminated by external actors that posed as...
26.01.21 | |

12 Jul

This week on Opinio Juris, we hosted a symposium on Ian Henderson and Bryan Cavanagh’s paper on Military Members Claiming Self-Defence during Armed Conflict. In a first post, Ian and Bryan discussed when self-defence applies during an armed conflict, while their second post dealt with collateral damage and “precautions in attack”. Their third post addressed prohibited weapons, obedience to lawful commands, and a ‘duty’ to retreat, and summarized the main points of their paper. In their final post, they focused on the concept of unit self-defence. Jens Ohlin and Kinga...
12.07.14 | |

11 Jul

...its nature and scale, reaches the threshold of an armed attack, the inherent right of national self-defence can be invoked and force may be used within the limits of that right. In such a case, unit self-defence would be absorbed within the jus ad bellum concept. If the use of force triggers an armed conflict, the law of armed conflict will become applicable, in which case, as discussed by Henderson & Cavanagh as well as Jens David Ohlin, the concept of self-defence (unit or personal) becomes arguably redundant. But what...
11.07.14 | |

28 Sep

...update, or repeal the 2001 AUMF and to clarify the basis for its action against ISIL and other terrorist groups that did not take part in the September 11th attacks – and in many cases did not even exist at the time of the attacks. See for instance Jens David Ohlin here, Deborah Pearlstein here, Peter Spiro here, Jack Goldsmith here, and Jennifer Daskal here. While both Sales and Daskal expressed concerned with the current legal framework dealing with terrorist threats in the United States, their opinion differed as to...
28.09.14 | |

14 Feb

Cross-posted at LieberCode. David Rieff has an interesting – and somewhat polemical – article in the latest Foreign Policy. Rieff, you will recall, was an early supporter of intervention, a policy position no doubt influenced by his time spent in Bosnia which culminated in Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West. Although initially hawkish on intervention, and willing to support liberal interventionism in Iraq, Rieff had a change of heart after the Iraq war failed to achieve any liberal goals. Not only did Rieff renounce the Iraq...
14.02.12 | |

25 Jun

I met Mike Lewis during my first year of law teaching at Cornell Law School. Mike was scheduled to give a lecture at the law school about torture and I was invited to give a commentary on his presentation. Mike had pre-circulated the paper that the presentation was based on. I disagreed with his thesis and pressed him sharply on its details during the event. His thesis had the virtue of proposing a very workable standard for defining torture, but I felt it yielded counter-intuitive results for particular...
25.06.15 | |

07 Mar

This fortnight on Opinio Juris, Kristen discussed the Elders Proposal for Strengthening the UN and its proposals to change the selection process for the position of the Secretary-General Jens pointed out how the end of an armed conflict can be as legally complex as its start, and wrote about the proposed CIA reorganisation. Patryk Labuda contributed a guest post on hybrid justice in Africa Julian asked whether Japan will embrace the ‘illegal but legitimate view of the UN Charter’s limits on the use of force. He also wondered whether the...
07.03.15 | |

06 Mar

Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times says that John Brennan has proposed a major reorganization of the CIA that will, to a large extent, break down the deep bureaucratic divide between agency analysts and clandestine operatives. Historically, analysts engage in research and, as their name suggests, intelligence analysis. Some of that was obscure and abstract–for example writing reports on the political situation in a country and the likelihood that a particular head of state might be deposed. But other aspects of that research might be of more...
06.03.15 | |

17 Mar

...proposed applying the justificatory theory to examine decisionmaking by actors that lack formal power in international decisionmaking, but still play an important role in it. Referring to the comments by Ralph Wilde and Rob Howse, she added that these actors might challenge the understanding of which values are considered “universal”. Tai-Heng Cheng’s response, which includes references to some of his other research, can be found here. On Wednesday, Kevin Heller reported on the ICC’s landmark first judgment in the Lubanga case. Jens Ohlin and Kevin Heller posted on the relevance...
17.03.12 | |