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19 Apr

Over at Vox, I have published an essay fleshing out the thoughts I first published here on the legality of the recent U.S. cruise missile attacks on Syria and the international reaction to it. President Donald Trump’s surprising decision to launch a cruise missile strike on Syria was sharply criticized by Russia as a “flagrant violation of international law.” While it might be...

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19 Apr

[Jennifer Trahan is Associate Clinical Professor, at The Center for Global Affairs, NYU-SPS, and Chair of the American Branch of the International Law Association’s International Criminal Court Committee. The views expressed are those of the author.] Postings on Opinio Juris seem fairly squarely against the legality of the U.S. missile strike last week into Syria. Let me join Jens David Ohlin (blogging...

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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....

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05 Apr

Reports of another horrific use of chemical weapons against civilians in Syria seems to have affected President Trump. In comments today, President Trump said the chemical attacks against civilians "crossed a lot of lines for me" and changed the way he views Syria and leader Bashar al-Assad. Although it is always hard to interpret the President's comments, he did cite his "flexibility" to change...

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03 Apr

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of Jesner v. Arab Bank in order to resolve a single issue: “[w]hether the Alien Tort Statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1350, categorically forecloses corporate liability.” This post will briefly review the case and offer a quick assessment of the ATS corporate liability issue.  Longtime readers will not be surprised to...

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03 Apr

[Daragh Murray is a Lecturer at the University of Essex School of Law and Human Rights Centre.] Thanks to Kevin for his post engaging with some of the issues discussed in my recent article on detention authority in non-international armed conflict. I would like to take this opportunity to provide a quick overview of my argument as relevant to this post,...

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31 Mar

In September 2011, Alexander Blackman, a Sergeant in the Royal Marines serving in Afghanistan, executed a Taliban fighter who had been incapacitated by his wounds.This was no spur-of-the-moment killing, as video recovered one year later makes clear. Here is the Court Martial's summary of Blackman's actions, as shown on the video: [The insurgent] had been seriously wounded having been engaged lawfully by an Apache helicopter...

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22 Mar

Over the past couple of years, a number of scholars -- including me -- have debated whether IHL implicitly authorises detention in non-international armed conflict (NIAC.) The latest important intervention in the debate comes courtesy of Daragh Murray in the Leiden Journal of International Law. As the article's abstract makes clear, Murray is firmly in the "IHL authorises" camp: On the basis of...

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19 Mar

Last week, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) sent shockwaves through the international community by issuing a report that -- for the first time in UN history -- claims Israel's treatment of Palestinians amounts to the crime of apartheid. Here is ESCWA's description of the report, entitled “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid,"...

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18 Mar

This morning President Trump tweeted that "Germany owes vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!" But that's not how NATO commitments work. And so this afternoon, former US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder gave President Trump a tutorial in nine tweets. Maybe we can...

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