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27 Sep

As readers know, the Special Court for Sierra Leone's Appeals Chamber upheld Charles Taylor's conviction and 50-year sentence yesterday. It's been interesting to watch human-rights groups and advocates claim, predictably, that the judgment is a milestone in the fight against impunity, a position that seems to wilfully ignore the significant failure of the prosecution in the case. After all, both...

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24 Sep

Things are continuing to gear up here in the United States for the big foreign affairs law case of the year -- U.S. v. Bond, which, among other things may allow the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit one of its most significant foreign affairs law cases ever - Missouri v. Holland.  Bond asks two questions: (1) whether the Constitution limits...

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23 Sep

Ryan has a fascinating but problematic post today at Just Security in which he takes international-law scholars to task for opportunistically flip-flopping on whether the US is involved in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda. Here is the crux of his argument, taken from the post's introductory paragraph: Those arguments have been inconsistent with regard to one fundamental legal question: whether the...

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23 Sep

It's been over five months since the Supreme Court rendered its landmark decision in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum. A quick review of lower court decisions suggests that Kiobel marks the end of the Filartiga revolution in the United States. The most significant lower court ruling to date is Balintulo v. Daimler AG where the Second Circuit rejected...

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16 Sep

This week, we are hosting a symposium on Interdisciplinary Perspectives on International Law and International Relations: The State of the Art, edited by Jeff Dunoff and Mark Pollack. Jeff and Mark will introduce the book later today, but here is the abstract: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on International Law and International Relations: The State of the Art brings together the most influential contemporary writers in the...

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12 Sep

In From Apology to Utopia, Martti Koskenniemi  mapped how international legal rhetoric can be used to “apologize” for power—to provide a fig leaf over the rude exposure of realpolitik—and how it can be utopian—making rules for a world that does not actually exist.  This week we have had two examples of international law and high politics: President Obama’s speech on Tuesday and Vladimir Putin’s...

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12 Sep

In his speech yesterday, Obama predictably took credit for the latest developments regarding Syria's use of chemical weapons: In part because of the credible threat of U.S. military action, as well as constructive talks that I had with President Putin, the Russian government has indicated a willingness to join with the international community in pushing Assad to give up his chemical...

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07 Sep

As readers of the blog no doubt know, Syria is is one of seven states that have not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). (The others are Angola, Egypt, Israel, Myanmar, North Korea, and South Sudan.) To consider Syria's use of chemical weapons as a rationale for attacking the country, the USG obviously needs to assume that the use of such...

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03 Sep

The legality under international law seemed to play an important role in the U.K. Parliament's deliberations over whether or not to support a strike on Syria.  The UK government issued an (admittedly bare bones) legal opinion which advanced a version of humanitarian intervention. So now that the U.S. Congress has taken up the same question, how important is the U.N....

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31 Aug

President Obama's decision to seek authorization for military intervention in Syria is a watershed in the modern history of war powers. At no point in the last half century at least has a president requested advance congressional authorization for anything less than the full-scale use of force. Foreign Policy's David Rothkopf gets it exactly right: Whatever happens with regard to Syria, the...

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