war

Episode 20 – Rebecca Ingber on Legally Sliding into War

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In this episode I speak with Rebecca Ingber, Professor of Law at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law, and formerly a lawyer in the Office of Legal Advisor in the U.S. Department of State. We discuss a recent essay in which Rebecca examines how international and domestic law operate together to facilitate the incremental moves by which the U.S. initiates, expands, and extends armed conflicts. The process involves legal justifications and rationales for each step towards war, with legal interpretations that, while made in good faith, are often strained and even beyond the pale. What is more, Congress and the courts tend to look to the international law principles as limitations on executive branch conduct, but then there is little check on how the executive branch lawyers interpret and expands such principles — and all of this focus on legal justification displaces a necessary and deeper policy analysis of the reasons for engaging in armed conflict. In exploring these issues, we also talk about whether legal scholars are fulfilling their role of keeping the government honest in its interpretation of international law, where exactly within the government such decisions get made, and why and how different areas of law get conflated and confused in the justifications for war!

Materials:

– “Legally Sliding Into War,” Just Security, Mar. 15, 2021.

– “International Law as Executive Power,” 57 Harvard Int’l Law J. (2016).

Recommended Reading:

– David Luban, “Complicity and Lesser Evils: A Tale of Two Lawyers,” Georgetown J. Legal Ethics, (forthcoming, 2021).

– Monica Hakimi, “The Jus ad Bellum‘s Regulatory Form,” 112 American J. Int’l L. 151 (2018) [See Episode 6!].

– E. M. Forester, The Machine Stops (1909).

Episode 17 – Nessa Interviews Martin on Climate Change and the Jus ad Bellum Regime

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In this episode, I relinquish the hosting to  Jasmin Johrun Nessa of Liverpool University Law School, and she interviews me on my recent work on how the climate change crisis may implicate the jus ad bellum regime. Jasmin is finishing up her doctorate on the doctrine of self-defense in jus ad bellum, and teaching international law among other things, at Liverpool Law School. She is also a co-general editor of the Journal on the Use of Force and International Law’s “Digest of State Practice.” We discuss my recent article on the climate change crisis and the jus ad bellum regime, in which I argue that as the climate change crisis deepens, and not only the consequences but the causes of climate change are viewed as threats to both national security and international peace and security, there will be pressure to relax the jus ad bellum regime to allow for the threat or use of force against “climate rogue states.” This will include a relaxation of the conditions for permissible self-defense, as we have seen in response to other novel threats, and pressure for a new exception to the prohibition on the use of force, along the lines of humanitarian intervention. I suggest that these arguments will be persuasive but dangerous, not only increasing the likelihood and incidence of war, but also being counterproductive to the climate change crisis effort itself — and so we must begin to discuss the issues now, and contemplate how to resist such developments, before the pressure mounts.

Materials:

– “Atmospheric Intervention: The Climate Change Crisis and the Jus ad Bellum Regime,” 45 Columbia Journal of Environmental Law 331 (2020).

Recommended Reading:

– Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro, The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World (2017).

– John Fabian Witt, Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History (2012).

– Ray Moore and Donald Robinson, Partners for Democracy: Crafting the New Japanese State Under MacArthur (2002).

Episode 16 – Terry Gill on the Use of Force Against Non-State Actors

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In this episode, I speak with Terry Gill, the Professor of Military Law at the University of Amsterdam, Center for International Law, and the Netherlands Defence Academy, and also the Director of the Netherlands Research Forum on the Law of Armed Conflict and Military Operations (LACMO). We discuss his recent article (co-authored with Kinga Tibori-Szabó) on the use of force against non-state actors (NSAs) within the territory of states that that are not substantially involved with, or exercising significant control over, the NSA, but which also do not consent to the use of force against the NSA within their territory – a familiar but still hot subject of ongoing debate. Terry explains why a strict understanding of the principle of necessity should be at the center of the analysis of these issues, and thus offers some perspectives on the so-called unwilling or unable doctrine that are quite different from others who support the right to use force against NSAs. We also revisit his much earlier work on the Nicaragua v. USA judgment of the ICJ, and how its formulation of attribution should be understood in this context.

Materials:

– “Twelve Key Questions on Self-Defense Against Non-State Actors,” 95 International Law Studies 468 (2019) (with Kinga Tibori-Szabó).

Reading Recommendations:

– Kinga Tibori-Szabó, Anticipatory Action in Self-Defence (2011).

– Sir Humphrey M. Waldock, “The Regulation of the Use of Force by Individual States in International Law,” 81 Hague Academy of International Law Lectures (1962).

– Jack Vance, Suldrun’s Garden: Lyonesse Trilogy Vol. 1 (1982).

Season 2: Episode 15 – Michael Schmitt on Cyber Ops and the Laws of War

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In this episode, the first of “Season 2”, I speak with Michael Schmitt, who is, among other things, Professor of International Law at the University of Reading, Francis Lieber Distinguished Scholar at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and Charles H. Stockton Distinguished Scholar at the US Naval War College.  He is also the Director of the International Group of Experts responsible for the Tallinn Manual 2.0 On the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations. We discuss the development of the Tallinn Manual, the reasons for a 3.0 that is currently underway, and the implications and significance of recent state declarations and statements on their understanding of how the jus ad bellum and IHL regimes apply to cyber operations. We also grapple with some of the difficult issues that arise in trying to apply these legal regimes to cyber ops, and, more importantly, how efforts to do so may threaten the integrity of the legal regimes themselves. Both a wonderful introduction for the uninitiated to how the laws of war apply to cyber ops, and a fascinating discussion of some of the more knotty questions for the experts.

Materials:

– Tallinn Manual 2.0 On the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations (2017).

– “Israel’s Cautious Perspective on International Law in Cyberspace: Part II (jus ad bellum and jus in bello),” EJILTalk!, Dec. 17, 2020.

– “France Speaks Out on IHL and Cyber Operations: (Parts I & II),” EJILTalk!, Oct. 1, 2019.

Reading Recommendations:

– Israel Ministry of Justice, “Israel’s Perspective on Key Legal and Practical Issues Concerning the Application of International Law on Cyber Operations,” 97 International Law Studies (2021).

– Ministère des Armées, Republique Français, International Law Applied to Operations in Cyberspace, Oct. 2019.

– Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of the Netherlands, Letter to the Parliament on the International Legal Order in Cyberspace (with Annexes), Jul. 5 , 2019.

Episode 7 – Alonso Gurmendi Dunkelberg on Latin American Approaches to the Laws of War

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In this episode, I speak with Alonso Gurmendi Dunkelberg, Professor of Law at the Universidad del Pacifico in Lima, Peru. We discuss his recent writing on the Latin American approaches to, and perspectives on, the jus ad bellum regime and principles of non-intervention. Drawing on a rich history of the Latin American response to the Monroe Doctrine and European approaches to intervention in the 19th Century, Alonso explains how the distinct Latin American perspectives developed, found expression in the Montevideo Convention of 1933, and contributed to the Latin American embrace of the U.N. system in 1946. He explains how a misunderstanding of the Latin American perspective leads to common misinterpretations of Latin American positions and responses to recent interventions, such as those in Syria, and debates over doctrinal issues, such as the validity of humanitarian intervention or the unwilling or unable doctrine. We round off our discussion by putting it all into the context of Third World approaches to international law. An eye-opening romp through history and theory!

 

Materials:

– “A Legal History of Consent and Intervention in Civil Wars in Latin America,”  7  J. Use of Force and Int’l L. 1 (2020).

– “The Latin American View of Jus ad Bellum,” Just Security, May 16, 2018.

– “The Other Carolines,” Opinio Juris, Feb. 17, 2020.

Reading Recommendations:

– Juan Pablo Scarfi, The Hidden History of International Law in the Americas: Empire and Legal Networks (2017).

– Liliana Obregón, “Between Civilisation and Barbarism: Creole Interventions in International Law,” 27 Third World Quarterly 815 (2006).

– Andrew Fitzmaurice, “Discovery, Conquest, and Occupation of Territory,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law, Bardo Fassbender and Anne Peters, eds. (2012).

Episode 6 – Monica Hakimi on the Informal Regulation of Jus ad Bellum

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In this episode, I speak with  Monica Hakimi, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. We discuss a recent article of hers in which she argues that the manner in which the U.N. Security Council tacitly endorses or supports the use of force by states that would otherwise be unlawful, must be understood as forming an “informal regulation” that is part of the jus ad bellum regime. She argues that this is not only true as a descriptive matter, but that as a normative matter we should embrace this as helping to strengthen the jus ad bellum regime. We debate some of these normative implications, and the extent to which such an informal regulation is consistent with different conceptions of the rule of law – which leads us into another recent chapter of hers on the value of state-level argument about the jus ad bellum. a fascinating discussion all round!

Materials:

– “The Jus ad Bellum‘s Regulatory Form,” 112 American J. Int’l L. 151 (2018).

– Symposium on Monica Hakimi, “The Jus ad Bellum‘s Regulatory Form,” 112 AJIL Unbound (2018).

Reading Recommendations:

– Tom Ruys et al., The Use of Force in International Law: A Case-Based Approach (2018).

– Michael Reisman, The Quest for World Order and Human Dignity in the Twenty-First Century (2013).

– Don Herzog, Sovereignty, RIP (2020).

Episode 1 – An Introduction by Host Craig Martin

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I am Craig Martin, the host of this podcast. In this introductory episode, I explain briefly the objectives, scope, and format of the podcast. I also provide an overview of the main legal regimes that comprise “the laws of war,” namely the jus ad bellum and jus in bello regimes – which, respectively, govern the conditions under which states may use force against other states, and govern the conduct of armed forces within armed conflict. I also refer to their relationship with some other regimes that affect armed conflict, including international human rights law, and constitutional war powers provisions in domestic law.

While this episode is aimed primarily at the non-expert, to provide background that may be helpful in understanding the issues raised in subsequent episodes, it also highlights many of the areas of controversy and debate that we will address in episodes to come, and so may be of interest to the expert listeners as well.

Supplementary Material:

I include below some links to my own writing on these issues, as these articles include sections that summarize the legal regimes discussed in this episode, which some may find helpful; and they will also give a sense of where I stand on some of the more controversial issues:

– “Challenging and Refining the “Unwilling or Unable” Doctrine,” 52 Vanderbilt J. Trans. L. 245 (2019).

– “A Means-Methods Paradox and the Legality of Drone Strikes in Armed Conflict,” 19:2 Int’l J. Human Rights 142 (2015).

– “Taking War Seriously: The Case for Constitutional Constraints on the Use of Force, in Compliance with International Law,” 76:2  Brooklyn L. Rev. 611 (2011).

The rest of my writing can be found on my webpage.