Armed Conflict
Just Security’s expert authors provide analysis on the legal, policy, and strategic dimensions of armed conflict, including the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Hamas war, counterterrorism operations, conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, and other armed conflicts across the globe, with a focus on international humanitarian law, war crimes and accountability, mitigating and remedying civilian harm, and the humanitarian impacts of warfare.
3,526 Articles
The Blackwater Trial: Part 2 – Two Legal Issues
In the first part of this summary, we introduced the individuals in Blackwater’s Raven 23 team and set out their contrasting arguments about what took place at Nisour Square…
The Blackwater Trial: Part 1 – Two Factual Issues
Earlier this week, a jury in Washington D.C. convicted four Blackwater guards for a shooting at Nisour Square, Baghdad. The sniper Nicholas Slatten was convicted of premeditated…
Chemical Weapons and Secrecy: a Terrible Combination
Last week’s New York Times article detailing the fact that, between 2004 and 2011, American troops in Iraq “secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells…
Military Commissions After Guantánamo
This Wednesday morning at 9:30 (EDT), a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit (Henderson, Rogers, & Tatel, JJ.) will hear oral argument in al Bahlul v. United States–a Guantánamo…
One More Thing on Goldsmith & Waxman
There is not much to add to my colleague Shalev Roisman’s response to Jack Goldsmith and Matthew Waxman’s essay in The New Republic arguing that it is President Obama, and…
Rejecting the Bush Comparison: A Response to Goldsmith & Waxman
Jack Goldsmith and Matthew Waxman have written an interesting essay on President Obama’s war powers legacy, boldly titled “Obama, not Bush, is the Master of Unilateral War.”…
The Third Time’s The Charm? SCOTUS CVSGs in Samantar
Amidst all the recent activity (and non-activity) at the Supreme Court this term, it might have been missed that the Court invited the Solicitor General to express the views of…
Obama Administration Landmine Policy – Part II
Part one can be found here. On his way to the opening of the UN General Assembly in New York last month, President Barack Obama stopped at the Clinton Global Initiative, where…
The jurisdictional issue delaying the al-Nashiri military commission: Saudi defendant + French ship + Malaysian shipper + Iranian oil + Bulgarian casualty = trial in a U.S. military commission?
A couple of weeks ago, the Chief Prosecutor in the Office of Military Commissions filed an appeal to the Court of Military Commission Review from an order by the trial judge dismissing…
Here’s the New U.S.-Afghanistan Bilateral Security Agreement
After much confusion over which was the final security agreement (news organizations citing it had linked to a November 2013 “predecisional” version) I’ve just…
Constitutional “Cross-Ruffing”: My New Article
About a year ago, I wrote about the Second Circuit’s decision in the Ghailani case, in which, among other things, the Court of Appeals rejected a former Guantánamo detainee’s…
Security Agreement With Afghanistan Raises Key Questions About How and When War Ends
Today, the United States and Afghanistan signed a long-awaited bilateral security agreement. The U.S. government promised to withdraw combat troops by December, and to leave nearly…