Law Commons^™

Environmental Damage Is A War Crime: Analyzing The Legal Implications Of The Russian Armed Invasion's Environmental Impact On Ukraine, Iryna Rekrut

JCLC Online

As a result of the armed invasion of Ukraine by the Russian

military, Ukraine has suffered extreme environmental damage that

affects both its land and its people. This article explores the

intersection of international law and environmental protection in the

context of armed conflicts, with a specific focus on the Russian armed

invasion of Ukraine. After describing the devastation faced by

Ukraine, this article examines existing frameworks in international

law such as the Rome Statute, the Geneva Conventions, customary

international humanitarian law, and domestic law. This overview

highlights guidelines in these frameworks that render environmental

damage during war impermissible. Despite …

Environmental War, Climate Security, And The Russia-Ukraine Crisis, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

This Article addresses the Russia-Ukraine conflict’s broad implications for energy security, climate security, and environment protections during wartime. I assert that in the short-term the Russian-Ukraine war is poised to hinder much-needed international climate progress. It will stymie international decarbonization efforts and cause greater uncertainty in other climate-destabilized parts of the world, such as the Arctic. While Russia has become a pariah in the eyes of the United States and other Western nations, it has forged new partnerships and capitalized on new, lucrative energy markets outside the West and Global South. But in the long term, the global renewable energy …

Integrating Doctrine & Diversity Speaker Series: The Rule Of Law In Crisis: Talking About Core Legal Values, Human Rights, And Current Events In Us Law School Classes 2023, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Integrating Doctrine & Diversity Speaker Series: The Rule Of Law In Crisis March 28, 2023, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Fighting For Whiteness In Ukraine, Marissa Jackson Sow

Law Faculty Publications

Teri McMurtry-Chubb’s Race Unequals: Overseer Contracts, White Masculinities, and the Formation of Managerial Identity in the Plantation Economy offers groundbreaking insights into the gendered economic hierarchies internal to the body politic of whiteness through its examination of the limitations that plantation overseers’ contracts in the American Deep South placed on their ability to exercise the proprietorship and contracting authority prerequisite to white identity. This Essay uses the Ukrainian campaign to be recognized as a liberal white nation, and formally become a member of the West, as a contemporary case study of how whiteness remains hegemonized and subject to the ability …

Ukraine's Push To Prosecute Aggression: Implications For Immunity Ratione Personae And The Crime Of Aggression, Rebecca Hamilton

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine dates back to its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s southern peninsula, Crimea. It was Russia’s brazen full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, however, that captured global attention and put the crime of aggression – the resort to war in violation of the UN Charter3 – in the spotlight.

The War In Ukraine And The Legitimacy Of The International Criminal Court, Milena Sterio, Yvonne Dutton

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The news of the many atrocities being committed as the war in Ukraine rages on has prompted a chorus of calls seeking to hold perpetrators accountable. Heralded as a critical player is the International Criminal Court (the ICC or “Court”). Unlike in the past where states have decried requests to increase the Court’s budget or refused to cooperate with the Office of the Prosecutor’s (“OTP”) efforts to gather evidence or arrest suspects, states are generously donating funding and other resources to bolster the Court’s likelihood of bringing successful prosecutions.

This Article argues that the unique situation surrounding state support for …

The Ukraine Crisis And The Future Of International Courts And Tribunals, Milena Sterio

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The Ukraine crisis is an example of modern-day conflict which poses various accountability challenges and demonstrates that not a single existing prosecutorial mechanism is capable of achieving a full measure of accountability while fulfilling the different goals of international criminal justice. As discussed in this Article, the prosecution of a sufficient number of Russian perpetrators of atrocities, as well as of Russian leaders, conducted legitimately and effectively, will necessitate the utilization of almost all accountability models - Ukrainian courts, a war crime chamber, the ICC, as well as an ad hoc aggression tribunal. The Ukrainian crisis demonstrates that all international …

Post-Conflict Reconciliation In Ukraine, Elena Baylis

Articles

Reconciliation mechanisms should be a core component of transitional justice in Ukraine. The nature of this conflict as a war justified by claims about history, identity, and legitimacy suggests that there will be a need for post-war reconciliation initiatives. Such reconciliation measures would be intended to enable Ukraine’s Russian, Ukrainian, and other communities to live together constructively within the same state. The goals of social reconciliation also converge with Ukraine’s long-term, political aims vis-à-vis both Russia and the European Union. This paper addresses three types of reconciliation measures that are important for post-conflict Ukraine. Instrumental mechanisms to engage post-conflict social …

Lessons Of The Past And The Humanitarian Outreach Of Poland To Ukrainian Refugees, Karin Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The reaction of Poland and its people is a refreshing departure from the historic blood rivalries of the past. This is similarly true of both Romania and Hungary; however, it is Poland that has absorbed the majority of Ukrainian refugees and Poland that has the most historically contentious relationship with Ukraine. Poland’s current humanitarian efforts with respect to its Ukrainian neighbors is evidence that some lessons have been learned from the past. Perhaps there is hope that some of the centuries old blood feuding can come to an end and countries can better work toward cooperative relationships in the future.

Rebuilding Ukraine Will Be Costly. Here's How To Make Putin Pay., Evan Criddle

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Sanctions On Russia: Imperfect But Necessary 03-02-2022, Gregory W. Bowman

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Russia-Ukraine: Resolving The World’S Most Dangerous Conflict, Mary Ellen O'Connell

NDLS in the News

Since late 2021, Russia has massed around 100,000 troops on the border with Ukraine, raising the specter of another use of force against its neighbor. The Russia-Ukraine crisis began in earnest in February 2014, when Russian troops spread out from their Black Sea naval base to take control of the Crimean Peninsula. Russia put forward a variety of familiar legal justifications at the time—intervention by invitation, humanitarian intervention, restoration of Russian borders, and self-defense. In my analysis, none of these attempts came close to excusing a serious violation of the United Nations Charter Article 2(4) prohibition on the use of …

Russia, Ukraine, And The Future World Order, Ingrid W. Brunk, Monica Hakimi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Russia's invasion of Ukraine, initiated on February 24, 2022, is among the most—if not the most—significant shocks to the global order since World War II. This piece assesses the stakes of the invasion for the core principles that lie at the heart of contemporary international law and the world order that it has helped to create. We argue, relying in part on the other contributions to the October 2022 agora on Ukraine in the American Journal of International Law, that however this war ends, it will reshape, in ways large and small, the world we all inhabit.

Law, Rhetoric, Strategy: Russia And Self-Determination Before And After Crimea, Christopher J. Borgen

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

On March 16, 2014 the residents of Crimea woke up in Ukraine, as they had every morning since the dissolution of the USSR at the end of 1991. That evening they went to sleep in what claimed to be the independent Republic of Crimea. They lived in that putative country for the next day. On March 18, the leaders of Crimea signed a treaty merging their day-old country into Russia.

Much had taken place before these three days in March 2014. There were arguments about Ukraine associating with the European Union (EU) or joining a Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union. …

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson

Articles

In this section: United States Objects to Russia’s Continued Violations of Ukraine’s Territorial Sovereignty, Including by Convoys Purporting to Provide Humanitarian Aid • United States and Afghanistan Sign Bilateral Security Agreement • United States Announces “Changes and Confirmations” in Its Interpretation of the UNConvention Against Torture • United States and China Make Joint Announcement to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Bolstering Multilateral Climate Change Negotiations • United States Deepens Its Engagement with ISIL Conflict • NATO Affirms that Cyber Attacks May Trigger Collective Defense Obligations

Property And Political Community: Democracy, Oligarchy, And The Case Of Ukraine, Monica E. Eppinger

All Faculty Scholarship

Widening wealth gaps in Western democracies have brought new scrutiny to relationships between property and political community. For the prior quarter century, Western legal scholars have urged privatization around the globe as the key to a virtuous circle of "market democracy." This Article traces origins of the market democracy consensus to ideas that identify positive features of political community -- liberty, wealth, or democracy -- with private property ownership. Fieldwork in Ukraine, where Western privatization advice was followed at a time of founding a new polity, provides data to compare predictions with outcomes. Two unexpected figures -- the Oligarch and …

Collateral Damage: Protecting Cultural Heritage In Crimea And Eastern Ukraine, Zoe Niesel

Faculty Articles

Since the early spring of 2014, the world has watched Russia utilize military forces to invade and annex territory belonging to Ukraine. These actions are, unsurprisingly, raising concerns in Eastern Europe over the prospect of armed conflict in the region, the political consequences of Russian annexation of Ukrainian territory, and the effect of this conflict on ordinary civilians. But there is another potential cost associated with Russia's actions that should not be overlooked - the loss of Ukrainian cultural heritage. History is replete with examples of the destruction of cultural heritage during periods of instability, from Napoleon's systematic looting of …

Nation-Building In The Penumbra: Notes From A Liminal State, Monica E. Eppinger

All Faculty Scholarship

The emergence of post-Socialist legal orders is reshaping some of the familiar terrain of comparative legal studies. This Article, invited as part of an effort to think about the topic of "What the Rest think of the West," reconsiders the vast legal re-codification projects that stand at the center of "nation-building" projects in formerly Socialist states. Such projects, and the rupture from which they emerge, challenge essentialist or static notions of identity and assumptions of where the West is or where the Rest begin. Anthropological concepts of "liminality" and "deixis" assist in understanding Ukrainian legal experts' thinking on legal reforms …

Discussion In The Security Council On Environmental Intervention In The Ukraine, Linda A. Malone

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Chernobyl Accident: A Case Study In International Law Regulating State Responsibility For Transboundary Nuclear Pollution, Linda A. Malone

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.