The US Supreme Court in some ways is a more prominent issue in this year’s election than it has been in most previous elections, although its influence on voters is uncertain. As in every presidential race for the past forty years, abortion is the focal point of discussions about how the election might affect the [...]
In the grand halls of the United Nations, where the fate of nations is debated, an increasingly urgent conversation is taking place. It’s a discussion about the very foundation of global security governance – the UN Security Council (UNSC). Calls for reform have been presented in academic circles, yet in the past few years, such [...]
More than three years since the military takeover by Taliban in 2021, Afghanistan remains engulfed in a severe human rights crisis. Extrajudicial killings, public executions, flogging in stadiums, and other forms of corporal punishment, arbitrary detentions, torture and disappearances of former government officials, members of the national security forces, judges, lawyers, human rights defenders, journalists, [...]
“For by Wise Counsel, Thou Shalt Make Thy War.” Proverbs 24.6 For mostly good reason, policy discussions of Israel’s nuclear strategy and doctrine have been intentionally vague and without evident nuance. More specifically, there have been few open-literature assessments of a limited nuclear war and its law-supported capacity for enhancing Israel’s strategic deterrence. Now, however, [...]
The conservative justices on the Roberts Court consistently lecture the American people about the importance of text, history, and tradition to constitutional litigation. They use the term originalism as a catch-all phrase for their alleged focus on prior law. They want the American people to believe that their preferred outcomes are based on legal sources [...]
Recent headlines brought a glimmer of hope to the women and girls whose lives under the Taliban have essentially been reduced to prison terms: Canada, Australia, Germany, and the Netherlands announced plans to bring the Taliban to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for gender discrimination. As an Afghan woman, I have been horrified to [...]
The opening days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine triggered a fierce and inspiring response by ordinary Ukrainians. They joined together in a mass uprising to defend their homeland. Under international humanitarian law (IHL), such an act of resistance is known as a “levée en masse” (levée). A levée is a unique category that temporarily [...]
The imperatives are plain. Whatever the trajectory of wars in the region, Israel has a law-based obligation to keep Iran non-nuclear. Immediately and incrementally, therefore, Jerusalem will need to ensure “escalation dominance” during periods of competitive risk-taking. This overriding responsibility concerns both Iran’s sub-state proxies (especially Shiite Hezbollah and Sunni Hamas) and Iran directly. What [...]
In this commentary, JURIST editor Caspian Rive a law and history honours student at Victoria University of Wellington argues that the New Zealand government should abandon the Treaty Principles Bill before it reaches Parliament. In Aotearoa New Zealand, there is no part of the constitution more wilfully misremembered than te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of [...]
When analyzing an Israeli attack on Hezbollah using the principles of the law of armed conflict (LOAC)—specifically military necessity, proportionality, discrimination, and unnecessary suffering—it is critical to break down each principle and apply it to the given scenario. This analysis assumes that the attack involved the use of pagers and electronic detonation, targeting Hezbollah as [...]
