In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Use of Force

15 Feb

[Isa Blumi is Associate Professor at the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Stockholm University.] Dr. Agatha Verdebout’s Rewriting Histories of the Use of Force (2021) charts how International Law’s founding generations of scholars sought relevance during times when the powerful adopted “the law” only when it suited their interests. By reading beyond the ‘emotional’, ‘cynical’, or ‘idealistic’ discourse that accompanied assertive claims about the...

|
14 Feb

[Alonso Gurmendi Dunkelberg is a Departmental Lecturer of International Relations at Oxford University.] Rewriting Histories of the Use of Force: The Narrative of Indifference, by Dr. Agatha Verdebout, is an impressive volume covering a vast time period with an ambitious goal: to, as the title suggests, “rewrite” the history of use of force in international law in the 19th century. Dr. Verdebout starts by noting...

|
14 Feb

[Mohamed S. Helal is Associate Professor of Law at the Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University; and member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration as well as of the African Union Commission on International Law.] Agatha Verdebout’s Rewriting Histories of the Use of Force: The Narrative of Indifference is an exhaustively researched and lucidly written volume that makes important contributions to both the history...

|
13 Feb

[Alexandra Hofer is Assistant Professor in Public International Law at Utrecht University.] I should probably start by admitting that I am not indifferent to Dr Agatha Verdebout’s Rewriting the Histories of the Use of Force: The Narrative of ‘Indifference’ (apologies for the poor wordplay). I first heard Agatha present her research in December 2015, during one of the seminars of Ghent University’s International Order & Justice...

|
03 Nov

On Tuesday, the Office of the President of Ukraine issued a press release concerning plans for creating a Special Tribunal for Russian Aggression. Most of the information in the press release was boilerplate, reaffirming the need for such a tribunal and expressing hope that the international community will get behind one. One comment, however, set off my lawdar: As noted at...

|
30 Oct

[Dr Melanie O’Brien is Associate Professor of International Law at the University of Western Australia. Dr O’Brien is President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), and a volunteer with the Australian Red Cross International Humanitarian Law Committee. Her work on forced marriage has been cited by the International Criminal Court, she has appeared before the ICC as an amicus...

|
13 Oct

As part of my position at the University of Copenhagen's Centre for Military Studies, I have started a podcast entitled "Lex Ferenda: Conversations about Law and War." Here is the general description: This podcast involves monthly hour-long video interviews with experts whose work and practice focuses on how international law affects the conduct of military operations. Guests will normally be drawn...

|
03 Oct

[Mateusz Piątkowski is an Assistant Professor at the University of Łódź, Poland (Faculty of Law and Administration, International Law Department), Attorney-at-law, and Member of the Polish Society of the Military Law and the Law of War.] On February 27, 2022, the EU foreign policy chief Joseph Borrel announced that the European Council decided to offer Ukraine a package of lethal weapons of significant value,...

|
12 Sep

[Luke James, LLM. is a security analyst interested in peace processes. He has worked at the ICC, OSCE, British Red Cross, Platform for Peace Humanity, UNV and is an Army Reservist.] On 5 July, Ret. Colonel John Spencer spoke at NATO’s Urban Warfare Conference in London. He described how Ukrainian President Zelensky “turned his civilians into fighters”, telling the Ukrainians citizens...

|