Anthony Clark Arend

With so many armed conflicts in the world today, it is far too easy to forget the abominable violence taking place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. My friend, Joe Grieboski, Founder and Chair of the Board of the Institute on Religion and Public Policy, reminds us of these unspeakable acts in The Huffington Post. He writes:
In the autumn …

From some time now, I have has reservations about the way in which the “Responsibility to Protect” has been understood. My reservations flow from a concern that the concept, which was endorsed at the 2005 UN World Summit, is sometimes misunderstood as a legal concept. Indeed, in a post in July of 2009, I was critical of a claim that …

Today, President Barack Obama issues to presidential documents dealing with issues relating to human rights abusers. The first is a Presidential Study Directive on Mass Atrocities; the second a Presidential Proclamation on Suspension of Entry as Immigrants and Nonimmigrants of Persons Who Participate in Serious Human Rights and Humanitarian Law Violations and Other Abuses. They follow below:

The White House
Office of …

Over at the Council on Foreign Relations blog,  The Internationalist, my dear friend and Georgetown colleague, Ambassador Mark Lagon, has a provocative post on Libya. Lagon writes:
Lawyers often say, “Hard cases make bad law.”   Yet the hard case of Libya raises important questions and lessons on meaningful global governance today.
When does a government’s sovereignty dissolve? The Responsibility …

A previous post reported on Nicholas Schmidle’s recent article in The New Yorker about his account of the raid on Bin Laden. From a legal perspective, a accurate description of the encounter between the SEALS and Bin Laden is critical to determining the lawfulness of Bin Laden’s killing. Now, the veracity of Schmidle’s account has been called into question. Paul …

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Eminent legal scholar Eric Stein, who first came to the University of Michigan Law School as a refugee from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and later helped his adopted country draft rules that still govern the United Nations, has died in Ann Arbor.

His death came peacefully after a long illness at 98.
The passing of a man universally …

Were the actions undertaken that fateful night in May a violation of international law? The answer to that question hinges to a large degree upon what actually happen at the very moment at which a Navy Seal pulled the trigger. In the August 8th issues of The New Yorker, Nicholas Schmidle has a fascinating account of the raid entitled, “Getting …

DOD Launches New Cyber Strategy Website

The Department of Defense today launched a new website http://www.defense.gov/cyber to highlight DoD’s first unified strategy for cyberspace announced on July 14.  The website is a tool to help explain and consolidate DoD’s cybersecurity accomplishments and new way forward for military, intelligence and business operations in cyberspace.
The new website is designed to …