Articles of War
Non-State Commentaries: Law-Making or Law-Suggesting?
What is the role of non-State commentaries with respect to understanding international law, and more specifically, the law of armed conflict? This question is surprisingly provocative—particularly with regard to the ICRC’s most recent publication of the 2020...
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Lessons for Legal Advisors from the Brereton Report
International humanitarian law practitioners and scholars have justifiably dedicated attention to the recent report of the Australian Defence Force...
Is the Lieber Code Humanitarian?
Some critics maintain that the Lieber Code is not humanitarian. They are surprised and disappointed that Francis Lieber—one of the fathers of...
A Review of U.S. Space Force’s First Year
The newest branch of the U.S. military, the United States Space Force, was mandated by Congress and signed into law and existence by the...
The Duty to Investigate War Crimes
On November 19, 2020, a report of the Australian Defence Force’s Inspector-General was released following a four-year investigation into...
Interpretation in the Updated GCIII Commentary
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Updated Commentary to the Third Geneva Convention is a remarkable feat of scholarship worthy of...
Reimagining IHL Principles Part II: A New Framework
Part II: A New Framework for IHL Principles To open the debate, in my previous post I argued that military necessity, humanity, chivalry, and...
Reimagining IHL Principles Part I: The Wrong Principles
Part I: We Have Been Using the Wrong Principles Most textbooks and State military manuals on the law of armed conflict, or international...
Mercenaries on the Battlefield: What Legal Advisors Must Know
Mercenaries … are useless and dangerous. And if a prince holds on to his state by means of mercenary armies, he will never be stable or secure… --...
Military Considerations and the Ntaganda “Attack” Question
This post concludes our series featuring the International Criminal Court’s recent hearings on the legal notion of “attack.” As...
The Unintended Consequences of International Court Decisions
In response to a prosecution appeal in the case of The Prosecutor v. Bosco Ntaganda, the International Criminal Court (ICC) is currently...
“Attacks” against Hospitals and Cultural Property: Broad in Time, Broad in Substance
On behalf of the Public International Law and Policy Group (PILPG), we recently filed an amicus curiae brief with the International Criminal...
Ending Wars: The Law of War’s Latest Source of Stress
The nineteenth anniversary of 9/11 offered a telling reminder of the problem of “forever wars.” In the United States, few Americans under the...