International Law
Just Security offers expert analysis of international law and its role in addressing global challenges. Our coverage includes litigation in international and regional tribunals, the process of international law-making, analysis of compliance and accountability for international law violations–including international criminal justice, and challenges to the international legal order.
3,502 Articles
One-and-a-Half Cheers for Salim v. Mitchell
This post is the latest installment of our “Monday Reflections” feature, in which a different Just Security editor examines the big stories from the previous week or looks…
US Government Concludes no “War Crimes” in Kunduz Strike, But Fails to Explain Why
The US government’s 120-page report on the Kunduz airstrike — in which US forces killed 42 civilians and destroyed a Médicins Sans Frontières hospital — found that US forces…
Congress’s Embarrassingly Empty (National Security) Record
This week, we learned the United States will send 250 special operations troops to the war in Syria, bringing the publicly known total number of American troops operating in the…
Yes, Russia’s Antics in the Baltic Sea Violate “International Rules”
Recently, Russian aircraft ‘buzzed’ a US Navy ship and ‘barrel rolled’ over a US Air Force plane above the Baltic Sea. The fallout cast a distracting pall over last week’s…
Would JASTA Violate International Law?
Writing in The New York Times last Friday, Curt Bradley and Jack Goldsmith argued that the Justice Against State Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) would “violate a core principle…
The Proposed Military Commissions Fix Is Anything But
This post is the latest installment of our “Monday Reflections” feature, in which a different Just Security editor examines the big stories from the previous week or looks…
We Need to Know More About the US’s Role in Yemen
A crowd quickly gathered when I arrived last month in what remained of the market in Mastaba, a small highway town in northern Yemen. A week earlier, on March 15, warplanes from…
The International Discussion Continues: 2016 CCW Experts Meeting on Lethal Autonomous Weapons
Last week, States Parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), the international treaty banning or restricting the use of land mines, blinding lasers, and other…
The State Department Adviser Signals a Middle Road on Common Article 1
In his remarks to the American Society of International Law earlier this month, State Department Legal Adviser Brian Egan stated that the United States’ commitment to upholding…
The Egan speech and the Bush Doctrine: Imminence, necessity, and “first use” in the jus ad bellum
This post is the latest installment of our “Monday Reflections” feature, in which a different Just Security editor examines the big stories from the previous week or looks…
Are all “members” of ISIL targetable?
Rita Siemion and Heather Brandon of Human Rights First have published a comprehensive post on some of the more important aspects of Brian Egan’s speech to ASIL. (My own…
International Law à la Carte: Brian Egan’s Jus ad Bellum Doctrine
Last week’s speech by State Department Legal Adviser Brian Egan laying out the legal and policy rationales behind the US’s war against ISIL was largely overlooked in the mainstream…