The Security Council lent Chapter VII authority to a body it cannot oversee when it adopted Resolution 2803 on Nov. 17, 2025, and the entity that emerged, the Board of Peace, is chaired for an indefinite term by Donald Trump personally rather than by the US government. That raises a question international lawyers should [...]
For the first time since Congress created it in 1996, the Justice Department has invoked the Alien Terrorist Removal Court (ATRC), a specialized tribunal that may consider classified evidence a respondent never sees, and order a noncitizen accused of terrorism removed. What the statute does not say is who decides whether that removal will deliver [...]
Weapons that select and engage targets without a human pulling the trigger are no longer hypothetical, and the legal architecture governing who bears responsibility when they kill the wrong person has not caught up. US Department of Defense doctrine defines autonomous weapon systems (AWS) as systems that, “once activated, can select and engage targets without [...]
The Gambia’s Supreme Court is weighing whether the country’s 2015 ban on female genital mutilation is unconstitutional — a challenge brought by religious traditionalists who say the prohibition violates their rights to culture and religion. The outcome in Almamy Gibba and Others v. Attorney General will test whether a cultural practice can claim constitutional protection [...]
The international system stands at an inflection point. The simultaneous rise of strongman leadership in China, Russia and the United States—three states whose power shapes global order—has accelerated a worldwide retreat from liberal democracy, multilateralism and the rule of law. This trend is not isolated. It has emboldened authoritarian figures across the globe, weakened international [...]
“The report of my death was an exaggeration.” —Mark Twain Friday, July 17 was the annual World Day for International Criminal Justice, chosen to commemorate the adoption of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). This year, that commemoration was, at best, overshadowed by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s pledge to “dismantle” [...]
A few weeks ago, while standing in a crowded Tehran metro station, I found myself facing a public display commemorating children reportedly killed in an airstrike on a school in Minab. The station continued to function around me with mechanical indifference: announcements repeating, passengers moving, bodies circulating through space as if nothing had been interrupted. [...]
Israel has ignored three binding International Court of Justice (ICJ) orders on Gaza for more than two years, a United Nations commission of inquiry concluded June 18, finding that it “continues to blatantly disregard” measures issued in January, March and May 2024 (A/HRC/62/CRP.2, para. 330). The finding is not just another entry in a long [...]
Whether the issue is redistricting, affirmative action, voting rights, abortion, presidential immunity, or any of the other country-defining questions that the Roberts Court has decided over the last two decades, there can be no doubt that the justices dramatically changed our nation’s politics and national identity. But the Roberts Court is not unique in its [...]
In mid-June, 17-year-old Shakiba* was arrested by the Taliban’s morality police (the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice) along with dozens of other women. Her alleged crime was “improper hijab.” Shakiba was fully covered in a chadar namaz—a full-body prayer veil—but she was wearing a little eye makeup, and that was [...]
