National Security Law

[Mark Nevitt is an Associate Professor at Syracuse University College of Law and affiliated faculty with Syracuse University’s Institute for Security Policy & Law and a former lawyer in the United States Navy.]    Is the climate-security century upon us?  If so, what are the implications for international legal governance and institutions?  In his recent Opinio Juris essay, based on his provocative and meticulously researched article, Atmospheric Intervention, Professor Martin argues...

[Larry D. Johnson is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Law School and the Former UN Assistant Secretary-General for Legal Affairs.] The US suffered a humiliating defeat on 14 August 2020 when the UN Security Council failed to adopt a US proposal to extend certain arms restrictions on Iran that are scheduled to be lifted soon pursuant to the “nuclear deal” (JCPOA) concluded in 2015 by China,...

Our friends at West Point have just launched an ambitious new blog, Articles of War.  The "Authors" page lists seven contributors, all of whom are well-known in IHL, military law, and cognate-discipline circles: Col. Joshua F. Berry, Prof. Geoff Corn, Prof. Ashley Deeks, Lt. Gen. Charles N. Pede, Col. Shane Reeves, Prof. Michael N. Schmitt, and Prof. Sean Watts. The...

[Dapo Akande, Antonio Coco, Talita de Souza Dias, Duncan B. Hollis, Harold Hongju Koh, James C. O’Brien and Tsvetelina van Benthem.] The alarming spread of the global COVID-19 pandemic—now infecting nearly 19 million and claiming more than 700,000 lives worldwide—has made it increasingly urgent to define international law protections for the health care sector against malicious cyber operations. In May 2020, malicious cyberattacks on...

[John B. Quigley is Emeritus Professor of Law at Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University.] The annexation, now under consideration by Israel, of land in occupied Palestine is aimed, in part, at bringing many of Israel’s settlements into the territory of Israel. Annexation, however, may bring the unintended consequence of the loss of those very settlements. Much of the land on which the...

Luca Ferro is a post-doctoral researcher at the Ghent Rolin-Jaequemyns International Law Institute (GRILI). He wrote his doctoral dissertation on International ‘Intervention’ in Theory and in Practice, assessing the legality of third-State involvement in the internal and external affairs of other States. Prematurely calling time of death on ‘negative equality’? On 5 and 6 December 2019, the Journal on the Use of Force and International Law (JUFIL) and the...

The first part of this two-part post reviewed the law that President Trump invoked in his executive order announcing a sanctions program regarding the International Criminal Court, and went through the different provisions of the order. This part will discuss some relevant issues not directly addressed in the order, and provide some views on what to expect going forward. A Modicum...

[Jennifer Trahan is Clinical Professor, NYU Center for Global Affairs and Megan Fairlie is Professor of Law, Florida International University College of Law.] On June 11, Donald Trump issued an Executive Order that exponentially intensifies the United States’ ongoing attack on the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its staff.  Disturbingly, the Order also targets foreign nationals and, seemingly, US nationals.  Regrettably (although predictably), the US is again using...

[Tamsin Phillipa Paige is a Lecturer with Deakin Law School and consults for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in relation to Maritime Crime.]  In 2018 I had the privilege of interviewing Seanan McGuire (in her Mira Grant persona) as part of my research project on understanding social perceptions and impacts of issues of law and justice through popular literature. We discussed her bestselling Newsflesh...

[Andreas Schueller directs the International Crimes and Accountability program at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR).] The current German coalition agreement says that the German government “categorically rejects extrajudicial killings, also by drones”. Nevertheless, the German armed forces leased drones that can be armed – yet without the respective weapons. The German government declared that it will employ these drones only in accordance to...

[Nathaniel Berman is the Rahel Varnhagen Professor of International Affairs, Law, and Modern Culture at Brown University. This is the second part of a two-part post.] [In Part One of this essay, I argued for the importance of the reaffirmation of the illegality of annexation of occupied territory. I outlined, and partly responded to, the criticism of this position “from the...