How does an international-law doctrine become conventional wisdom without actually having support in the practice of states? It starts with one article asserting the doctrine, but failing to defend it. Then another article makes the same claim, citing only the first article. And then another. And another. And so on -- until no one remembers that the first article did not...
Big news -- and news I wasn't expecting: A former prisoner at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from Australia on Wednesday won a legal challenge to his terrorism conviction before a military court. The U.S. Court of Military Commission Review struck down the March 2007 conviction of David Hicks in a unanimous ruling that reverses what had been one...
Regular readers of the blog know that one of my hobbyhorses is the "unwilling or unable" test for self-defense against non-state actors. As I have often pointed out, scholars seem much more enamored with the test than states. The newest (regrettable) case in point: my friend Claus Kress, who is one of the world's best international-law scholars. Here is what he writes...
I still need to write Part 2 of my response to Ryan Goodman, but it's worth noting that he and I actually agree about detention in NIAC much more than we disagree. We both agree that IHL itself does not authorize such detention. We both agree that the standard governing detention in NIAC is that it must be non-arbitrary. We...
At Just Security, my friend Ryan Goodman has posted a long analysis of Serdar Mohammed v. Ministry of Defense, in which the UK High Court held that IHL neither authorizes nor regulates detention in non-international armed conflict (NIAC). That decision will soon be considered by the Court of Appeal. In his post, which is a must-read, Ryan states that he agrees with the High Court...
I am occasionally accused -- correctly, of course -- of using the blog as little more than a tool for shameless self-promotion. So it gives me great pleasure to use the blog as a tool of shameless other-promotion and announce the publication of Jens's important new book, The Assault on International Law, now available from our friends at Oxford University Press....
The Washington Post has a long article today about how Mossad and the CIA collaborated to blow up Hezbollah's chief of international operations in 2008. Here are the key paragraphs: On Feb. 12, 2008, Imad Mughniyah, Hezbollah’s international operations chief, walked on a quiet nighttime street in Damascus after dinner at a nearby restaurant. Not far away, a team of CIA spotters in the...
Ian Henderson may be mad at me. He asked for fewer posts on foreign relations. But he also asked for more posts on treaties. I have a new paper up that tackles both topics -- An Intersubjective Treaty Power. For those of you who are interested in such things, here's the abstract: Does the Constitution require that U.S. treaties address matters...
[Nimrod Karin is a J.S.D. candidate at New York University School of Law. From 2006 to 2012 he served as a legal adviser to the Israel Defense Forces at the International Law Department of the Military Advocate General’s Corps’ HQ, and from 2012 to 2013 he was the Deputy Legal Adviser to Israel’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations.] Thanks so much...
Just Security has published two long guest posts (here and here) on the ICC and Palestine by Nimrod Karin, a J.S.D. candidate at New York University School of Law who was previously Deputy Legal Adviser to Israel’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations. There is much to respect about the posts, which are careful, substantive, and avoid needless hyperbole. And I agree...
Not surprisingly given where I perch on the political spectrum, I love protest songs. One of my favourite jogging playlists is a disparate collection of classics -- Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth," Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction," Country Joe and the Fish's "I Feel Like I'm Fixin to Die Rag," Paul Revere and the Raiders' "Indian Reservation," Phil Och's...
[Adv. Ido Rosenzweig is the chairman of ALMA –Association for the Promotion of International Humanitarian Law; Director of Research – Terror, Belligerency and Cyber at the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions in the University of Haifa; and a PhD candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.] Recently the Palestinians submitted (for the second time) a declaration...
