Latest in Jus ad Bellum/UN Charter/Sovereignty
What would Hart and Locke say about how documents like the U.S. Constitution or the U.N. Charter remain law?
What causes international law’s institutional deficit?
Earlier this week, two eminent scholars contended that there were no legal grounds for strikes on Syria. Here’s another view.
Legitimacy and lawfulness in armed conflict have always been intertwined in a delicate dance. The recent U.S. and allied strikes in Syria, however, are introducing a dangerous new step.
What debates about the meaning and efficacy of the U.N. Charter might tell us about international law—and constitutional law.
Surely if any cause is just, the fight against this sort of evil qualifies.
Embedded in the theory justifying the UK strike in Syria is the idea that the Syrian government was unwilling or unable to suppress that threat. It seems France also may soon rely on the same legal theory as the United Kingdom.
The novelty is not British involvement in the use of lethal force against an ISIL target, a British citizen. The novelty, instead, was the location of the attack (Syria) and the resulting invocation of what looks very much like the US government's imminent/continuous-threat self-defense theory.
Prime Minister David Cameron is looking to do more in Syria against ISIS. Today his Minister of Defence, Michael Fallon, made the case before Parliament that the UK should participate in coalition airstrikes against ISIS inside Syria. The UK government’s renewed interest in undertaking airstrikes in Syria is driven largely by the attack last week on tourists in Tunisia, in which 29 or 30 of the 38 killed were Brits. (Officials are investigating links between the attacker and ISIS.) Cameron’s government also seems motivated by the idea that limiting uses of force to Iraqi soil makes little strategic sense when ISIS itself treats the Iraqi/Syria border as irrelevant. But what does this still-developing situation say about the UK's justification, under international law, regarding the use of force?
It appears that the United States conducted an airstrike in Libya yesterday, targeting and killing Mokhtar Belmokhtar--a notorious Algerian terrorist who was once a member of GIA and GSPC, continued as a key leader for GSPC after it affiliated with al Qaeda and became AQIM, and most recently broke with AQIM by going independent with