In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Foreign Relations Law

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. 
|
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...

|
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...

|
11 Sep

Last night I blogged about Obama's speech that outlined the administration's plan to contain and destroy ISIS. I noted that Obama announced his intention to ask for congressional authorization for the plan while steadfastly maintaining that he did not need this authorization. He was vague about why. In my blog last night, I presumed that he was asserting that he...

|
10 Sep

Bobby Chesney has responded at Lawfare to my most recent post on the CIA and the public-authority justification. It's an excellent response from an exceedingly smart scholar. I still disagree, but Bobby's post really hones in on the differences between us. I'll leave it to readers to decide who has the better of the argument. I do, however, want to discuss...

|
08 Sep

In the first part of my response to Bobby, I argued (after meandering around a bit) that Title 50's "fifth function" provision cannot be used to authorise the CIA to kill Americans overseas -- a necessary condition of any argument that the CIA is entitled to a public-authority justification with regard to 18 USC 1119, the foreign-murder statute. (Bobby kindly responds here.) I...

|
06 Sep

My friend Bobby Chesney has responded at Lawfare to my previous post arguing that Title 50 does not provide the CIA with a public-authority justification to kill Americans overseas. He disagrees with both of the limits on presidential authority to authorise covert action I discussed. I will address the Article II question in a separate post; in this post I want...

|
04 Sep

Today's Jerusalem Post features an article discussing testimony by a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan that purports to demonstrate the IDF takes more care in avoiding civilian casualties than any other army in the world. Here is a snippet: Israel's ratio of civilian to military casualties in Operation Protective Edge was only one-fourth of the average in warfare around the...

|
02 Sep

As readers are no doubt aware, Libya has descended into absolute chaos. As of now, there is quite literally no functioning central government: Libya’s newly elected parliament has reappointed Abdullah al-Thinni as prime minister, asking him to form a “crisis government” within two weeks even as the authorities acknowledged they had lost control of “most” government buildings in Tripoli. Senior officials and the...

|
27 Aug

On the record, US officials invariably defend even the most indefensible IDF uses of force in Gaza, most often parroting the Israeli line that the IDF does everything it can to spare civilian lives and that Hamas's use of human shields is responsible for any innocent civilians the IDF does kill. When speaking anonymously, however, those same officials tell a very different...

|