In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Foreign Relations Law

30 Oct

Earlier this year, Chris Gevers blogged about the Zimbabwe Torture Docket case, in which the Constitutional Court of South Africa was asked to determine whether the South African Police Service (SAPS) is required to investigate allegations that high-ranking government and security officials in Zimbabwe committed acts of torture. Those acts took place solely in Zimbabwe and involved only Zimbabweans, so the key...

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25 Oct

While in DC last week for the ICC/Palestine event at George Mason -- I'll post a link to the video when it becomes available -- I had the pleasure of sitting down with Lawfare's Wells Bennet and Just Security's Steve Vladeck to discuss the oral argument at the DC Circuit on the al-Bahlul remand, which the three of us attended...

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24 Oct

These days, I usually use Twitter to point readers to blog posts that deserve their attention. But Mark Kersten's new post at Justice in Conflict is so good -- and so important -- that I want to highlight it here. The post achieves the near-impossible, passionately indicting Canada's right-wing government for creating a political environment ripe for terrorism without in any way suggesting that...

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14 Oct

I will be participating next week in what should be an excellent event at George Mason University on the ICC and Palestine. The other participants are all excellent -- David Luban, Meg DeGuzman, George Bisharat, and the organizer, Noura Erakat. Here is the flyer: I hope at least some Opinio Juris readers will be able to attend and hear my dire prognostications in person. (If you do,...

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12 Oct

A few years ago, John Brennan articulated the US position concerning self-defence against non-state actors: Because we are engaged in an armed conflict with al-Qa’ida, the United States takes the legal position that —in accordance with international law—we have the authority to take action against al-Qa’ida and its associated forces without doing a separate self-defense analysis each time. As the quote makes...

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29 Sep

I will be back blogging regularly soon, but I want to call readers' attention to a phenomenal new article at the Intercept by Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain about how the US government has cynically manipulated public fears of terrorism in order to justify its bombing campaign in Syria. Recall that Samantha Power -- the UN Ambassador formerly known as...

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28 Sep

[Myriam Feinberg is a Post-Doctoral Fellow of the GlobalTrust Project, Tel Aviv University (as of October 1, 2014)] As part of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism's 14th Annual World Summit on Counter-Terrorism, a workshop was jointly organised by the ICT and the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism of Syracuse University (INSCT), as part of the project ‘New Battlefields, Old Laws.’ Started in 2006 to adapt our understanding of laws of war, the NBOL Project brings together scholars and experts who aim to address the challenges for the future of armed conflict. This year's NBOL workshop dealt with the way we adapt to new threats and expanding battlefields in counterterrorism and culminated in an Oxford Union style debate on the future of the 2001 AUMF. A video of the debate can be found here. The debate could not have been timelier as the blogosphere is abuzz following President Obama’s speech on the United States’ ‘Strategy to Counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)’ delivered on the eve of the thirteenth anniversary of the attacks of 11 September 2001. In his speech, the President authorised further air strikes against ISIL militants in Iraq and appeared to authorise air strikes in Syria.   He stated that he secured bipartisan support and welcomed further congressional action, yet also made clear that he did not need further authorisation from Congress to launch the strike. Other official statements made clear that the administration was relying on the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, which authorized the use of force against those responsible for the September 11, 2001, as a justification for striking ISIL. This comes despite a national security address at the US Military Academy in May 2013, when Obama said he wanted to repeal the 2001 AUMF. At the NBOL workshop, Professor Nathan A. Sales of Syracuse University College of Law and Professor Jennifer Daskal of American University Washington College of Law debated the following motion: ‘This House believes that the 2001 AUMF should be amended to authorize force against future terrorist threats’.
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23 Sep

[Jennifer Trahan is an Associate Clinical Professor of Global Affairs at NYU-SPS.] President Obama’s speech on September 10th raised many legal issues, including, whether there needs to be added Congressional authorization for the use of force, or one can utilize the pre-existing Authorization for the Use of Military Force (“AUMF”) that Congress granted after 9/11 (see Deborah Pearlstein’s post and Peter Spiro’s).  But his speech also raised profound questions at a second level – that of public international law (touched upon by Kevin Jon Heller). This may not seize the attention of the American public, but surely coalition partners would ask these questions:  what was Obama’s basis for the legality of air strikes in Syria? It is somewhat troubling that President Obama took the step of supporting air strikes in Syria, without articulating any clear legal foundation at the international level.  Just to be clear, the issue of air strikes in Iraq against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (“ISIS”) does not raise similar questions, as Iraq had earlier consented to the use of force. There are a number of possible legal rationales for air strikes in Syria, but the U.S. needs to make the case under one of these grounds.  Such a legal foundation was not well-articulated in President Obama’s speech. 
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13 Sep

There's been much discussion in the blogosphere about the University of Illinois' decision to "un-hire" (read: fire) a Palestinian-American scholar who resigned a tenured position at Virginia Tech to join its faculty, a decision motivated by a series of anti-Zionist (but not anti-Semitic) tweets that made the University's wealthy donors uncomfortable. But the rightful revulsion at Illinois' decision (more than 5,000...

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12 Sep

Mike Lewis has a guest post at Just Security today responding to Ryan Goodman's recent post exploring what the US's claimed "unwilling or unable" test for self-defence against non-state actors means in the context of Syria and ISIS. Ryan, careful scholar as always, rightly points out that the test "remains controversial under international law." Mike doesn't seem to have any such...

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