international law
A little over a month ago, I wrote about the growing academic literature concerning human rights treaties and their lack of influence on human rights practices. Based on my own experiences growing up in parts of the U.S. where it’s assumed we can "[Rebuild] Our Culture One Purity Ball at a Time,” I likened human rights treaties to virginity pledges, saying that “in most circumstances, these human rights “pledges” don’t work to improve human rights practices. In some circumstances, they can actually lead to a worsening of governmental human rights practices.” There is a brand-spankin-new forthcoming article at American Journal of Political Science by Yonatan Lupu of George Washington University that may indicate my previous conclusion was overstated: when fully accounting for state preferences in treaty commitments, Lupu does not find any evidence that treaties make things worse. This is good news for human rights advocates everywhere and very important for human rights/treaty scholarship! Lupu’s article definitely deserves your attention.
The thirteenth Duck of Minerva podcast features Nicholas Onuf. Nick is one of the "founding parents" of contemporary constructivism. His book, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relation -- which has been reissued by Routledge -- introduced the term to describe an approach to the study of world politics.
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The thirteenth Duck of Minerva podcast features Nicholas Onuf. Nick is one of the "founding parents" of contemporary constructivism. His book, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relation -- which has been reissued by Routledge -- introduced the term to describe an approach to the study of world politics.
The podcast is wide-ranging -- part of oral history, part interview, part discussion -- such that I've had difficulty figuring out how to insert chapters. If you're listening via m4a, you'll see that the podcast has only a few chapter titles. "Enter Constructivism," for example, contains not only information about World of Our Making but also about the state of the field in the 1980s, the rise of liberal institutionalism, and so on.
The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) recently determined that the situation in the entire country of Syria can be classified as a non-international armed conflict. While this may not have been news to many watching events unfold there, what makes this statement interesting is that this position differed from the position advanced in May 2012 by then ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger. At that time, Kellenberger claimed that parts of Syria could be classified as an “internal” armed conflict, particularly in the area around Homs and in the Idlib district. The difference may appear inconsequential, but may in fact have some significant impact on the ground. The difference between whether an entire country is embroiled in a non-international armed conflict versus specific locations within that country has bearing on what constitutes a violation of international law. The two main bodies of international law relevant to armed conflict are international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL). IHL is the body of law which governs armed conflict and is only triggered when there is an armed conflict. IHRL generally applies in peacetime, although it can apply during war time as well. What is interesting about Kellenberger’s statement is that it is a departure from how IHL has traditionally understood territoriality within the context of non-international armed conflict.
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I am preparing to leave for a week to conduct participant-observation research at the The Third Meeting of States Parties (3MSP) to the Convention on
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Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer (writing at the Fair Observer) argues that there's no double-standard problem because the Libyan intervention did not establish or reflect a generalized
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Today I presented some thoughts on Henry Farrell's International Studies Association panel on "Transnational Politics and the Information Age." The panel, which included Joe Nye,
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Usually when I blog about drones and extrajudicial execution, someone leaves a comment to the effect that terror suspects are "legitimate military targets" under the
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Ante GotovinaLast week I wrote about targeting and mentioned the Gotovina Case. This case has become interesting for those interested in international law and post-conflict
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Timothy Peterson and Leah Graham recently published a study in the Journal of Conflict Resolution showing that, after you control for the democratic peace, similarities
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There are many good reasons to read David Scheffer's All the Missing Souls: its insider story of the war crimes trials, written by one of
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The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has released a new report alleging that CIA-piloted drones have regularly attacked rescuers and funerals as well as high-value targets
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Guest Post by Betcy Jose-Thota, Assistant Professor, University of Colorado-Denver.
According to al Jazeera’s English language website, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Mahmoud Jibril, head
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It has been five months since protests in Tripoli sparked widespread 'civil unrest'/war, a NATO enforced no fly zone, and partial (and unclear) international interventions.
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My Rules of War class this past Spring was an Honors version of the course, and to challenge my students I asked them to do
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Like Robert Haddick, though for different reasons, I was glad to see a State Department spokesperson publicly issue the legal justification for the manner in
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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
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At the risk of beating a dead terrorist horse, I want to cite W. Hays Parks (former Special Advisor to the Office of Legal Counsel
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Someone recently asked me whether, in the wake of the Richard Goldstone's qualifications of his infamous report, the UN was losing its credibility to issue
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