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02 Apr

[Sushma Nagaraj is an Advocate practicing commercial and constitutional law before the Bombay High Court, India. She assisted Mr. Kevic Setalvad, the Senior Advocate who represented AWAS Ireland Ltd. (the Petitioner before the Honorable Delhi High Court) with legal research on aviation law and public international law.] Indian Courts have, for the most part been generous in applying International Law but recently, the...

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31 Mar

From April 17-19, the University of Southampton is scheduled to host a conference entitled "International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism." As the title indicates, the conference was always going to be controversial. (Full disclosure: I was originally scheduled to present at the conference, but pulled out a couple of weeks ago because I simply didn't...

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26 Mar

Just Security published a post by Laurie Blank, Geoffrey Corn, and Eric Jensen yesterday criticizing two surveys that are interested in how laypeople think about IHL's principle of proportionality. Much of what the authors say is absolutely correct, particularly about the need to recognize that assessing ex post the ex ante decision-making process of military commanders is fraught with difficulty and likely...

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24 Mar

My friend Rogier Bartels published two excellent posts at Just Security over the past few days (here and here) in which he argues that it is inherently perfidious to launch an attack from a military object disguised as a civilian object. Just Security has just posted my lengthy response. Here is how I conclude the post: At the risk of sounding like an...

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11 Mar

Another complementarity fight is brewing, this time between the ICC and Cote d'Ivoire concerning the fate of Simone Gbagbo. In 2012, the ICC issued a warrant for her arrest, claiming that there are reasonable grounds to believe she is responsible as an indirect co-perpetrator for the crimes against humanity of murder, rape, other forms of sexual violence, and persecution. Just yesterday, however,...

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09 Mar

I'll one-up Julian's post below on Tom Cotton's letter to the leaders of Iran admonishing them that any agreement entered into today could be reversed by Obama's successor. It appears unprecedented for a group of opposition members of Congress to engage in such a communication. It may also be criminal. The 1799 Logan Act provides that: Any citizen of the United States, wherever he...

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09 Mar

Most of the US Senate's Republican membership has signed an open letter to Iran's leaders "informing" them about the nature of the U.S. constitutional system with respect to international agreements.   It is actually a very accurate statement of US foreign relations law, even if it is a little strange and potentially intrusive into the President's foreign affairs power. It...

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02 Mar

Japan has been slowly moving to modify its domestic law, both constitutional and legislative, restricting the use of its military forces outside of Japan.  In its latest political discussions, it is worth noting that Komeito, a partner to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, has been insisting on the three "Kitagawa" principles as a basis for any new law governing the...

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