United Nations (UN)
1,271 Articles
New UN Report Released; Addresses Legal Controversies in Drone Use
A new UN report on drone strikes and targeted killings by the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions has been published, ahead of a UN General Assembly debate scheduled…
Why the US Failure to Support an ICC Referral for Syria does not Protect Israel (or American Interests)
As we watch and wait for the outcome of the destruction and disposal of the chemical weapons in Syria, the issue of accountability for war crimes and/or crimes against humanity…
Humanitarian Intervention and Global Legal Norms
Thank you to Harold Koh for spurring (here and here) a discussion about some of the most important issues of our time—on matters concerning wars of choice and building an effective…
Syria and the Law of Humanitarian Intervention (Part III – A Reply)
My recent two-part essay on Syria, posted on this blog, made both a policy claim and a legal claim. My policy claim was that despite undeniable political miscues, President Obama’s…
The Interface of IHL and IHR: A Taxonomy
As the excellent Jinks/Corn/Rona series on IHL/IHR notes, there are a number of theories surrounding the interface between international humanitarian law (or the law of armed conflict)…
Syria and the Law of Humanitarian Intervention (Part II: International Law and the Way Forward)
My first post for Just Security explained why, despite some bungled politics, President Obama’s proposed military action in Syria could have been lawful under U.S. domestic law.…
Security Council Resolution on Syria is Final but Russia Begins Chipping Away
On Friday, I posted an analysis of the draft Security Council Resolution on Syria questioning the strength and scope of its legal obligations. The United Nations has now released…
Are the Press Reports of the Security Council’s Draft Syria Resolution Accurate? How weak or strong is it?
After weeks of diplomatic wrangling, the permanent members of the Security Council emerged last night with a compromise draft resolution on chemical weapons in Syria. The key part…
Syria and the Law of Humanitarian Intervention (Part I: Political Miscues and U.S. Law)
Crises are lived forward but understood backwards. While it is still too early to know how the Syria crisis of 2013 will end, we can start evaluating what precedents of law and…
The U.S.-Russia Agreement on Syrian Chemical Weapons: More Questions Than Answers
The Framework Agreement negotiated by the United States and the Russian Federation to bring Syria’s chemical weapons under international control seems like an elegant way out…
The ICC as the Sword of Damocles
The destruction of the chemical weapons would not be enough. An unexplored option exists to help resolve the situation in Syria: the Security Council could refer the Syrian situation…