The ICRC has stated that the violence in Syria constitutes an non-international armed conflict. This is significant because it means the organization tasked with guarding and promoting the Geneva Conventions is declaring that at least portions of the Geneva...
Photo from Still BurningThe Canadian International Council has rolled out a series of interviews and essays on "Peace v. Justice: The ICC and its Alternatives". Far from flogging a dead theoretical...
Blue moon, you targeted me standing alone...Yesterday Charli wrote a post on whether or not those opposed to the use of drones should use the concept of “atrocity law” instead of “war crimes” or...
Photo courtesy of Etsy. The perfect lawfare key chain!Over at the Lawfare blog, Jack Goldsmith recently offered up a "mea culpa" on his changing views of the concept and practice of lawfare. I don't...
On Wednesday, Xavier Rauscher at International Jurist posted his response to the hullabaloo over international law and the death of bin Laden. I’ve said my piece on it here and I’m getting tired of the issue, but Rauscher’s post is interesting because he tries to look at the “big picture” – noting that the manner in which bin Laden was killed has thrown more fuel on the fire over the “war on terror” vs “law enforcement” debate. He also notes the commentary surrounding the fact that the debate over the issue seems to highlight the fact that within international politics we now seem to have...
In my Friday post I forgot to give a shout out to Ben Wittes and the Lawfare Blog who have been writing about this since last fall. In particular, they had an excellent series of posts on the concept (but way of a discussion of the Rule of Law in by Brigadier General Mark Martins (in Centcom and apparently in Afghanistan) on the concept here, here and especially here. (He offers his own interpretation of “lawfare as COIN”). It’s a very interesting discussion and highly relevant for those interested in these issues. (Although late to the party, I do mean to write my own response to this –...
There has been so much going on with the international law front, it’s kind of hard to know where to begin. In sum:The Obama administration has decided to put Khalid Shiek Mohammed on trial at Guantanamo rather than New York City.The Obama administration has released a legal opinion on the Authorization Use of Military Force in Libya. The ICRC is concerned over unexploded ordinance in Libya (UXO).The ICRC will be releasing it’s update to the International Customary Law study very soon. (Register here!)Human Rights Watch doesn’t like incindiaries. (Surprise!)Richard Goldstone has backed down...
Eric Posner had a recent piece in The National Interest on the concept of "lawfare," in which he appears to define "lawfare" as efforts to undermine powerful states' foreign policy goals by holding them accountable to international norms (he lumps Wikileaks and Human Rights Watch together as two such entities), then to say that NGO activity in this area isn't really "lawfare," (well duh) and then goes on to say (conflating NGO activity with lawfare) that actually, the non-state sector is so powerless that really, states like the US shouldn't worry too much about all this "lawfare."Lawfare is...