Topics

International Law, Order, and Justice

International Law, Order, and Justice

The Russian invasion of Ukraine that began on February 24, 2022, heralded the emergence of an increasingly realist world order. Russia’s open aggression with flagrant violations of fundamental norms and rules is a clear challenge to the liberal world order that has...

Laws of Yesterday’s Wars Symposium – Make War Sharp Again?

Laws of Yesterday’s Wars Symposium – Make War Sharp Again?

Editor’s note: The following post highlights a chapter that appears in Samuel White’s edited volumes Laws of Yesterday’s Wars published with Brill. For a general introduction to the series, see Samuel White and Professor Sean Watts’s introductory post. Francis Lieber...

New Lieber Institute Senior Fellows

New Lieber Institute Senior Fellows

We are pleased to announce the addition of three Senior Fellows to the Lieber Institute for Law and Warfare. Gary Corn, Laura A. Dickinson, and Helen Durham each bring a wealth of talent and experience across a broad range of subjects. Their expertise extends to...

ICJ Ruling on Iran’s Proxy War: The United States Must Pay

ICJ Ruling on Iran’s Proxy War: The United States Must Pay

On March 30, the International Court of Justice issued a ruling on financial measures that the United States had adopted against Iranian assets. The case was brought by Iran, seeking to challenge the legality of these financial measures as a breach of the Treaty of...

LTC Alcala Awarded ASIL’s Baxter Prize

LTC Alcala Awarded ASIL’s Baxter Prize

The American Society of International Law (ASIL) has awarded the 2023 Richard R. Baxter Military Writing Prize to Lieutenant Colonel Ronald Alcala for his paper "Cultural Evolution: Protecting 'Digital Cultural Property' in Armed Conflict.” The Baxter Prize is awarded...

Dead Bodies of War in Legal-Historical Context

Dead Bodies of War in Legal-Historical Context

“We have come for the bodies of the slain, wishing to bury them in observance of the universal law ….” Euripides, The Suppliants, ca. 423 BCE[i] Since the early days of the war between Ukraine and Russia, there have been various accounts of what is being done or not...

The Law in War: A Concise Overview

The Law in War: A Concise Overview

When we first plotted our plan to write the 1st edition of this book, our goal was to offer an accessible narrative overview of international humanitarian law for both lawyers and non-lawyers interested in the topic. To that end, the original 2018 edition addressed...

“Strict” versus “Qualified” Neutrality

“Strict” versus “Qualified” Neutrality

The support neutral States are providing Russia and Ukraine has ignited a debate over neutrality. It is one of existential magnitude for Ukraine. Indeed, the survival of Kyiv in early 2022 can be attributed in significant part to external support, particularly the...

U.S. Evidence Sharing with the ICC

U.S. Evidence Sharing with the ICC

The U.S. Supreme Court often reminds our government that it must speak with one voice in the world. This is no less true within an administration than it is across the federal branches or with respect to the community of States. From 1793 when George Washington...

Ukraine Symposium – The Law of Belligerent Occupation

Ukraine Symposium – The Law of Belligerent Occupation

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has raised important and timely issues regarding the application, implementation, and enforcement of the law of armed conflict. Particularly relevant, is the law of occupation. Unfortunately, this discrete subset of the law of armed...

Ukraine One Year On – Defying the Odds

Ukraine One Year On – Defying the Odds

On 24 February 2023, one year has passed since Russia commenced its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The past year has been filled with acts of aggression, war crimes, and continued atrocities. International humanitarian law (IHL) is one of the most profound and...

Humanitarian Assistance: Between the Law and Reality

Humanitarian Assistance: Between the Law and Reality

The catastrophic earthquakes that razed parts of Türkiye and Syria earlier this month have caused deaths, injuries, and damage of almost incomprehensible proportions. International aid requested by the Turkish government has been forthcoming, although the scale of...

Use of Force and UN Mandates to Protect Civilians

Use of Force and UN Mandates to Protect Civilians

The UN’s protection of civilians (PoC) concept remains contested twenty-three years after the first PoC mandate given to the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) in 1999. The PoC component of a UN peacekeeping mandate can consist of all sorts of measures...

Prosecuting War Crimes Symposium – Evidentiary Challenges

Prosecuting War Crimes Symposium – Evidentiary Challenges

Editor’s note: The following post highlights a subject addressed at a Lieber Institute expert workshop focusing on Prosecuting War Crimes. For a general introduction to this symposium, see Professor Sean Watts and Jennifer Maddocks’s introductory post. The Commission...

A Digital Red Cross: What Would It Defend Against?

A Digital Red Cross: What Would It Defend Against?

On November 18, 1991, after enduring a three-month artillery assault, the city of Vukovar in Croatia fell to what was then known as the federal Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) and Serb paramilitary forces. After JNA units took control of a hospital where hundreds of sick...

Ukraine Symposium – A Wagner Group Fighter in Norway

Ukraine Symposium – A Wagner Group Fighter in Norway

In the early hours of Friday, January 13th, the alarm went off in a military border guard base in northern Norway. Someone had illegally crossed the border with Russia, and Norwegian conscripts were tasked to find the person. The intruder turned out to be a former...

Year Ahead – When You Least Expect It…

Year Ahead – When You Least Expect It…

Those of us long enough in the tooth to remember Candid Camera will remember this opening to that classic television show. So, what exactly does that have to do with an Articles of War post on the year ahead? In my view, everything, because it reminds us that in the...

Year Ahead – Thinking Back to Think Ahead

Year Ahead – Thinking Back to Think Ahead

Last year, the Lieber Institute and I published a volume on the future law of armed conflict (LOAC) (the volume’s introduction is available here, and a detailed review, thanks to our friends over at Lawfire, is available here). It grew out of our effort to think about...

Year in Review – 2022

Year in Review – 2022

2022 has been an unprecedented year for the law of armed conflict (LOAC) and for Articles of War. The full-scale international armed conflict that Russia has been waging against Ukraine since 24 February has spawned multiple LOAC issues. Meanwhile, Russia’s flagrant...