The debate over autonomous weapons is not so visible in the United States, but the ban campaign launched by Human Rights Watch a year ago - an international NGO coalition called the "Campaign to Stop Killer Robots" - has been quite active in Europe and at the UN, where a number of countries raised the issue in their statements to...
Lyle Denniston is first out of the gate with his take on the oral argument in the much-anticipated U.S. Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Bond. His general take: The argument in Bond v. U.S. (docket 12-158) reached the grand constitutional scale that has been its potential all along. At the end of an hour-long hearing, it appeared that the government might just have...
November 5, 2013 is U.S. National Treaty Day. Well, not really, but it might as well be given how much treaties are going to be in the news tomorrow. For starters, the United States Supreme Court hears oral argument in the case of Bond v. United States (for the pleadings, see SCOTUS blog's as-always-excellent round-up). As we've blogged previously (a lot), the case...
In my previous post, I mocked Scotland Yard's assertion that David Miranda, Glenn Greenwald's partner, committed an act of terrorism by transporting documents stolen from the US government by Edward Snowden. Mockery remains the appropriate response, given the vast chasm that separates Miranda's actions from any defensible conception of terrorism -- such as the one I quoted from UN General...
No, not actual terrorism, "[c]riminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons, or particular persons for political purposes." That's still going strong. I'm talking about the concept of terrorism, which has officially lost all meaning whatsoever: British authorities claimed the domestic partner of reporter Glenn Greenwald was involved in "terrorism" when he tried to...
[Sean D. Murphy is the Patricia Roberts Harris Research Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School. He is a member of the United Nations' International Law Commission.] For the next two weeks, the Sixth Committee of the U.N. General Assembly will be debating the Annual Report of the International Law Commission, covering its 65th session in Geneva held...
I had the privilege last week of speaking in London at a superb Chatham House/Doughty St. Chambers symposium on the ICTY's recent high-profile acquittals in Perisic, Gotovina, and others. My co-panelists were John Jones, QC, Saif Gaddafi's ICC-appointed lawyer, and Elies van Sliedregt, the Dean of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Chatham House's Elizabeth Wilmshurst was the moderator. I don't believe the symposium...
In a unanimous decision, the Appeals Chamber has reversed Trial Chamber V(a) and held that Ruto is required to continuously attend his trial, with exceptions to be granted only in exceptional circumstances. The decision is limited to Ruto, but it clearly applies to Kenyatta, as well, whom Trial Chamber V(b) has also excused from continuous presence. It's decisions like these that make...
Just Security has been kind enough to post my reply to an excellent post by Ryan Goodman. Here is the introduction: In a recent post here at Just Security, Ryan Goodman offered a novel – and characteristically intelligent – defense of the US position that it is involved in a non-international armed conflict (NIAC) not only with al-Qaeda, but also with al-Qaeda’s “associated forces.”...
At Just Security today, my friend Harold Koh has mounted a typically masterful defense of the legality of unilateral humanitarian intervention (UHI) in Syria and other places. I wish all advocates of UHI were as thoughtful. Not surprisingly, though, I'm not convinced by Koh's argument. Let me offer four (disconnected) thoughts on his claims below. A “per se illegal” rule would...
Ryan has kindly responded to my post commenting on his claim that "arguments have been inconsistent with regard to one fundamental legal question: whether the US is, as a matter of law, in an armed conflict." Unfortunately, our conversation has something of a Pinteresque quality: in claiming that I mischaracterized one of his central claims, he mischaracterizes my central claim....
For the non-twitterati, Omar al-Bashir has -- unsurprisingly -- cancelled his trip to the UN. That decision reflects an underappreciated "soft power" aspect of the ICC: even an unexecuted arrest warrant limits the freedom of a suspect facing charges. There may be no reasonable prospect of Bashir being arrested anytime soon. But there is also no reasonable prospect that he...
