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.
3,544 Articles
The US Needs a New International Strategy for Cyberspace
Editors’ Note: The following post is the latest installment of our weekly feature, “Monday Reflections,” in which a different Just Security editor will take an in-depth…
New Paths to Accountability for Crimes in Syria and Iraq (Including ICC Jurisdiction Over Foreign Fighters)
Horrific crimes in Syria during the Syrian Civil War and more recent ones in Iraq have led to widespread frustration at the present lack of a clear accountability mechanism. …
Due Process and Detention at Guantanamo: Closing the Constitutional Loopholes
The D.C. Circuit recently heard argument in Al Bahlul v. United States, where the defendant has made a series of constitutional challenges to the Guantanamo military commissions. …
Does International Law Matter?
Editors’ Note: The following post is the ninth installment of a new feature, “Monday Reflections,” in which a different Just Security editor will take an in-depth look…
Gideon’s Army at Guantanamo
Despite enormous logistical and legal hurdles, defense attorneys for high value detainees at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military prison, say they press on for the judgment of history,…
UN Panel: Blackwater Convictions are the “Exception, not the Rule”
Last week’s Blackwater convictions highlight an urgent need for an international treaty ensuring that private security contractors are held accountable if they commit human rights…
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.”…