Use of Force

[Colleen Murphy is the Roger and Stephany Joslin Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy and Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.] Ruti Teitel’s 2000 book, Transitional Justice,was and remains agenda-setting for scholars working in normative theory.  In this post I explain why and some of the ongoing debates whose origin can be traced to her work. Normative theories of justice specify what...

[Ruti Teitel is the Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law, New York Law School; and a Visiting Fellow, London School of Economics and the author of Transitional Justice (OUP, 2000).] As one enters the main building of Humboldt University in Berlin, one finds a famed quotation from Karl Marx, which has survived the post-Communist transition: “The philosophers have only interpreted...

This week we are hosting another great online symposium, this time on the 20th anniversary of Ruti Teitel's seminal book, Transitional Justice, (OUP, 2000). The book's abstract: At the century's end, societies all over the world are moving from authoritarian rule to democracy. At any such time of radical change, the question arises: should a society punish its ancien regime or let bygones by...

[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,...

[Craig Martin is a Professor at the Washburn University School of Law. He specializes in legal constraints on the use of force and armed conflict, in both public international law and comparative constitutional law. He can be reached at: craigxmartin@gmail.com] In Part I of this essay I explained that as the consequences of the climate change crisis worsen, states will increasingly...

[Craig Martin is a Professor at the Washburn University School of Law. He specializes in legal constraints on the use of force and armed conflict, in both public international law and comparative constitutional law. He can be reached at: craigxmartin@gmail.com] In this year of cascading crises, the climate change crisis is slipping off the radar. Not only that, but the Coronavirus pandemic and...

[David J. Scheffer is Visiting Senior Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations and Tom A. Bernstein Genocide Prevention Fellow, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and was the first U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues (1997-2001). The author’s observations and views in this article are solely his own and do not reflect any institutional position.] How will the survival and legacies of tens of millions...

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...

My friend Craig Martin has started a new international-law podcast entitled "JIB/JAB: The Law of War Podcast." Here is his description: This is a podcast about the various legal regimes that govern the use of force and armed conflict – primarily the jus ad bellum regime, which governs when states may lawfully resort to force, and the jus in bello regime (also known as international...

[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...