In association with the International Commission of Jurists

National Security Law

28 Jun

Just a quick note for folks following the Congressional wrangling over U.S. military activity in Libya and the War Powers Resolution:  later this morning, Opinio Juris' own Peter Spiro will be testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. U.S. State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh is also set to testify and, presumably, defend the Administration's position.  Louis Fisher of the...

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27 Jun

I am delighted to announce the publication of my book "The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law."  The book can be ordered from Oxford University Press here; Amazon should have it (at a whopping $8.78 discount) in the next few days.  Here for the last time is the cover: Once again, I want to thank...

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24 Jun

Earlier today, the U.S. Court of Military Commission Review (CMCR) held in U.S. v. Hamdan that material support for terrorism is a war crime and thus within the jurisdiction of the military commissions.  The decision represents the apotheosis of the US's utterly self-referential approach to international law, because the CMCR managed to reach that conclusion without citing a single non-American...

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23 Jun

More than a decade ago, the U.S. Defense Department's Office of General Counsel (DoD OGC) released a detailed analysis of the way international law would operate to guide U.S. military activity in cyberspace.  It was an impressive effort and is still worth reading today despite all the intervening, and dramatic, changes in the technology and the geopolitical landscape.  At the...

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21 Jun

Apologies for the light blogging the past couple of weeks -- although the upside is that I am now officially Dr. Heller, having successfully defended my dissertation at Leiden University in the Netherlands a few days ago.  It was an amazing (and amazingly formal) experience, and I'll blog about it once I get the official photos from the university. I've been...

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31 May

In honor of the US government's decision to charge Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men responsible for 9/11 with the non-existent war crime of conspiracy, I want to call readers' attention to an excellent new article by Samuel Morison about the equally non-existent war crime of material support for terrorism.  Morison vivisects the government's attempt to justify material support...

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24 May

[Marty Lederman is an Associate Professor of Law at Georgetown Law. He was was Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel from 2009 to 2010 and an Attorney Advisor in OLC from 1994-2002. This post is cross-posted at Balkinization.] [Slightly updated as noted to reflect valuable reader reactions.] Shortly after the recent military operation against Osama bin...

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19 May

[Harold Hongju Koh is the Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State.] I write in response to those who have raised questions regarding the lawfulness of the recent United States operation against Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. United States officials have recounted the facts of that well-publicized incident, most recently in the interview of President Obama on CBS News 60 Minutes...

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17 May

Can arguments for preemptive self defence under international law be regarded as a mirroring of feminist arguments for justified self-defence in cases of homicide by individuals who have experienced long-term domestic violence? This is one of the questions Dianne Otto raises in response to my MJIL article, ‘Feminist Reflections on the ‘End’ of the War on Terror’. In the article...

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