In late March, Ukrainian authorities reported that Russian forces had forcibly transferred over two thousand children from the Russian-occupied Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine into Russia. Other reports note that Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner asserts that more than 121,000 Ukrainian children have been forcibly deported to Russia, where the government is reportedly preparing the necessary [...]
After the Second World War, the International Committee of the Red Cross created new treaties to constrain the methods and means of warfare—a stark acknowledgment that armed conflict would continue to exist and that the world needed updated legal limits on the waging of war. The Geneva Conventions (1949), Additional Protocols (1977) and customary international [...]
With the Russian invasion of Ukraine comes calls for war crimes investigations and prosecutions, and rightfully so. Many of the discussions surround questions concerning whether war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide have been committed, who can be prosecuted, and which venue will best serve the people of Ukraine and the interests of justice. As [...]
Last month a Federal District Court in North Carolina held that Representative Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) could not be excluded from the 2022 primary ballot for his role in the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. The Court ruled that a ballot challenge brought against Representative Cawthorn by state voters under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment [...]
On March 24, 2022 the Ohio Supreme Court denied Ohio Senator Vernon Sykes’ and Ohio House Minority Leader Allison Russo’s motion to move Ohio’s May 3 primary to a later date. Their motion followed the Ohio Supreme Court’s March 16 decision striking down the Ohio Redistricting Commission’s second stab at drawing non-partisan maps for Ohio’s [...]
“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” – US President Joe Biden, March 26, 2022 Though rarely recognized, international law is part of the law of the United States. It follows, among other things, that if the American president’s recent call for Vladimir Putin’s departure was consistent with the law of nations, it [...]
“The dust from which the first man was created was gathered in all four corners of the earth.” – Talmud Reforming International Law In the midst of Russia’s escalating crimes against Ukraine, the United States and other nations have one widely overlooked obligation: To re-examine and re-conceptualize core elements of authoritative [...]
When Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine in February, the international community responded with “unprecedented” and “severe” sanctions against Russia. Their expansive scale essentially leads to Russia’s economic and even political isolation. The purpose of the sanctions is clear: to punish Putin’s regime for the violation of international law and stop its military aggression against [...]
I. Introduction The world’s attention is focused on Ukraine and the vicious war ravaging the country, forcing millions of people to flee. But is this Russian invasion different than other invasions by a major world power in terms of violations of international law? It is and it is not. On the one hand, the Russian [...]
The other day, when I woke up in the morning, I thought that I should go to Kyiv and do my part by remembering George Orwell and the Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, and paying homage to Catalonia. My 66 year old body shortly thereafter said that the Ukrainians are not asking for [...]
