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Enforcing International Humanitarian Law Through The Business Responsibility To Respect Human Rights, Tara Van Ho

Faculty Articles

Insulation produced by the Danish company Rockwool—or its Russian subsidiary—lines thirty-one Russian Navy warships. Though not a weapon, this material is essential to the vessels’ operation. Did Rockwool have a responsibility under international law to stop the transfer of the insulation to the Russian Navy before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine? This article examines the business responsibilities under the 2011 United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (“UNGPs”). In doing so, the article finds that the business responsibility to respect human rights in the UNGPs provides a strong mechanism for enforcing international humanitarian law (“IHL”). However, it requires …

Dokdo/Takeshima And Maritime Delimitation Between The Republic Of Korea And Japan: A Comment On Icj Dispute Resolution, Katherine Angell

Celebrating WCL Student Authors

The Republic of Korea (Korea) should agree to submit the issue of sovereignty over Dokdo/Takeshima and the issue of maritime delimitation in the East Sea/Sea of Japan to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) because the ICJ is likely to decide that Dokdo/Takeshima is Korean territory and the tensions in the East Sea/Sea of Japan can be resolved to allow further cooperation between the two nations. The ICJ is the primary avenue for peacefully resolving territorial and maritime delimitation disputes between nations, and the ICJ has developed a substantial body of case law analyzing these issues. The ICJ considers various …

Genocidal Accusation, Steven Arrigg Koh

Faculty Scholarship

To accuse of genocide — what does it mean? Genocidal accusation is ubiquitous today, evident more in the public square than in any courtroom. At first glance, such accusation seemingly relies on a central assumption: genocidal accusation is critical to preventing atrocity. This Article argues that this widespread assumption is incomplete, obscuring genocidal accusation’s dual nature. In fact, genocidal accusation encompasses not only laudable atrocity prevention (for example, the Rwandan genocide), but also problematic punitive, carceral discourse that brands the “other” as morally polluted (such as President Putin’s Ukraine invasion). It is thus challenging to evaluate such accusation in the …

Parameters Autumn 2025, Usawc Press

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

From The Editor In Chief, Antulio J. Echevarria Ii

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Welcome to the Autumn 2025 issue of Parameters. We open with two In Focus commentaries. The first, “A Case for Military Proportionality: Disabling Nuclear Plants” by Henry Sokolski, offers practical ways in which military planners can disable civilian targets, such as nuclear infrastructure, without undermining operational goals, alliance cohesion, or long-term political objectives. Our second commentary, “The Consequences of Declining Patriotism in the United States” by Neil N. Snyder, presents findings from a national survey showing a decline in patriotism, especially among Generation Z nonveterans. His article highlights a growing civil-military values gap with implications for recruitment and national …

Lawfare And Terrorism – Can Terrorism Justify The Use Of Force?, Joanna Siekiera

Graduate Research Conference (GSIS)

As the world became increasingly interconnected, the significance of international law has been augmented exponentially. International law encompasses a vast array of legal systems, written norms, and customary principles that govern the interactions between states, still being the primal and main norm creators, as well as to some extent international organizations, and other non-state actors (NSA) gaining more and more influence, and finally us - individuals. In recent times, the utilization of law as a tool of warfare has gained prominence, with public and private entities leveraging legal arguments and international institutions to achieve their military and political objectives. While …

Cultural Conquest: Russia's Strategic Assault On Ukrainian Heritage As Both A Catalyst For And A Casualty Of Conflict, Brittan Harrell

American University International Law Review

Vladimir Putin and his government have disseminated fabricated claims about Ukraine’s history, language, and sovereignty as a rationalization for the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Not only has the war resulted in grave human loss, but it has also caused widespread destruction throughout Ukraine. Nongovernmental organizations, foreign governments, academics, and Ukrainian citizens have collected robust evidence that Russian forces are purposefully targeting repositories of Ukrainian identity. The intentional destruction of this protected property is considered a war crime under the Rome Statute. Following the International Criminal Court’s (“ICC”) first successful prosecution for the destruction of protected property in 2016, there has …

The Price Of Consent, Zohra Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

This Article demonstrates how hierarchies in the international economy and in international financial institutions have facilitated the U.S.-led Global War on Terror (GWOT). Using U.S.-Pakistan relations as a case study, it shows how the United States has deployed its powerful position at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to claim Pakistan's consent for its military activities in the region. In the GWOT's first decade, beginning in 2001, the United States openly sought forcible regime change, as in Afghanistan and Iraq; in its second and (now) third decades, the United States has waged covert counterinsurgency campaigns allegedly against militant groups in Muslim-majority …

From The Editor In Chief, Antulio J. Echevarria Ii

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Welcome to the Spring 2024 issue of Parameters. Readers will note a few differences in the formatting for this issue: we are now using endnotes instead of footnotes to facilitate switching from pdf to html via Adobe's Liquid App; also, readers will be able to click on each endnote number to view the full endnote and then switch back to the text to resume reading. Please drop us a note to let us know how you like the changes. More are coming!

International Law, Self-Defense, And The Israel-Hamas Conflict, Eric A. Heinze

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

This article examines the international law of self-defense as it applies to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict to determine whether the October 2023 attacks by Hamas against Israel can be interpreted under Article 51 of the UN Charter as an “armed attack” that gives Israel the right to use military force in self-defense against non-state actors. It situates the conflict within ongoing legal and political debates, shows how this conflict fits into a changing global reality where the most dangerous security threats do not exclusively emanate from other states and concludes that Israel’s resort to force in the current conflict appears …

Parameters Spring 2024, Usawc Press

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

Aggressor Status And Its Impact On International Criminal Law Case Selection, Nancy Amoury Combs

Pace International Law Review

The laws of war apply equally to all parties to a conflict; thus, a party that violates international law by launching a war is granted the same international humanitarian law rights as a party that is required to defend against the illegal war. This doctrine—known as the equal application doctrine—has been sharply critiqued, particularly by philosophers, who claim the doctrine to be morally indefensible. Lawyers and legal academics, by contrast, defend the equal application doctrine because they reasonably fear that applying different rules to different warring parties will sharply reduce states’ willingness to comply with the international humanitarian law system …

Sticker Shock: The Icj, Russia, And A $300 Billion Price Tag For War, Caitlyn Quinn

American University National Security Law Brief

Ukraine has experienced unprecedented devastation since Russia launched a full scale invasion into its Eastern territory in February 2022. Thousands have been killed, and billions of dollars of infrastructure has been damaged. As a result, over the past three years, the international community has been evaluating ways to hold Russia accountable and to help rebuild Ukraine upon the cessation of the war. Billions of dollars in Russian Central Bank assets have been frozen, and multiple states have proposed seizing Russia’s frozen assets to meet these objectives. However, outright asset seizure presents genuine legal concerns about foreign sovereign immunity and may …

Strengthening The General Assembly, Chiara Giorgetti

Law Faculty Publications

Still fully immersed in the devastations of World War II and keenly aware of the inability of the League of Nations to prevent it, the winning nations negotiating the Charter of the new United Nations in San Francisco in April–June 1945 aimed at creating a novel international organisation that embodied a new balance of power mechanism: a system focused on having one – powerful – executive organ and a plenary organ with more of a consultative function (Department of State, 2017). Thus, on one side, the UN system provided a Security Council (SC) – with a two-­ tiered membership constituted …

Future-Proofing U.S. Laws For War Crimes Investigations In The Digital Era, Rebecca Hamilton

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Advances in information technology have irrevocably changed the nature of war crimes investigations. The pursuit of accountability for the most serious crimes of concern to the international community now invariably requires access to digital evidence. The global reach of platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter means that much of that digital evidence is held by U.S. social media companies, and access to it is subject to the U.S. Stored Communications Act.

This is the first Article to look at the legal landscape facing international investigators seeking access to digital evidence regarding genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression. It …

The Fall And Rise Of Bengali Muslim Conciousness: Conceptualising The Identity Of The Bangla Universal, Habib Khan

Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of modern-nation states saw the end of the empirical era of exploitation and exercise of inherent racist tendencies towards the 'other'. However, the effect of that colonial system is still ever-present in the creation and governance of these newly independent states. While every new state aims to be 'modern', they adopt the international legal framework of the West as their own - a system they had initially wanted to escape. The concept of Muslim universality in the form of the ummah should have freed Pakistan from the shackles of its former colonial masters. Instead, this phenomenon was replaced …

Into The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death: War Crimes Committed In Service Of Russia's Crusade To Destroy Ukraine, Chris Galarza

American University National Security Law Brief

When Russian tanks rolled across the border into Ukraine during the early morning of February 24, 2022, most in the American defense and diplomatic establishment were shocked and sure the war would be over in a few days. Credible open-source tactical and strategic analysis predicted that Ukraine’s regular military forces would be defeated in “days or weeks” as long as Russian military forces were determined to pursue their objectives. The United States Government was so sure that Kyiv was under imminent threat of capture that they offered to evacuate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy so that he could rule from exile, rather …

After Action: The U.S. Drone Program's Expansion Of International Law Justification For Use Of Force Against Imminent Threats, Elodie O. Currier

Vanderbilt Law Review

Until the 2000s, the United States' attempts to shift international legal norms on imminence to allow for greater use of armed force abroad were largely unsuccessful. In the past two decades, however, drone use and careful legal gamesmanship by U.S. officials have opened an unprecedentedly broad allowance for use of force in imminent self-defense. As drones become increasingly available to state and non-state actors, this permissive regime poses a threat to national and international security. This Note analyzes two decades of international customary law formation around drone use outside of armed conflict through a new lens post U.S.-withdrawal of Afghanistan. …

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

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & 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.

Putin V. Zelensky: Reflections On Leadership, Global Order, And The Rule Of Law, Charles H. Brower Ii

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

War Crimes: History, Basic Concepts, And Structures, Richard J. Wilson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

On May 24, 2022, the Washington Post carried front-page news that a court in Ukraine had sentenced a 21-year-old Russian soldier, Vadim Shishimarin, to life imprisonment for the war crime of premeditated murder of a civilian, 62-year-old Oleksandr Shelipov. The session was the first war crimes trial in Ukraine since Russia's invasion three months earlier.

Brain-Computer-Interfacing & Respondeat Superior: Algorithmic Decisions, Manipulation, And Accountability In Armed Conflict, Salahudin Ali

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

This article examines the impact that brain-computer-interfacing platforms will have on the international law of armed conflict’s respondeat superior legal regime. Major Ali argues that the connection between the human brain and this nascent technology’s underlying technology of artificial intelligence and machine learning will serve as a disruptor to the traditional mental prerequisites required to impart culpability and liability on commanders for actions of their troops. Anticipating that BCI will become increasingly ubiquitous, Major Ali’s article offers frameworks for solution to BCI’s disruptive potential to the internal law of armed conflict.

Innovative Thinking: Modernizing Outer Space Governance, Diane M. Janosek

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

Space security is essential to global safety and prosperity. International treaties should modernize and reflect the world’s innovation in space and governance needs. One must look back to 1967 for the inaugural “Outer Space Treaty,” the first and only binding multilateral agreement for peaceful space use and exploration. In 50 years, technologies and space capabilities have evolved; an updated global treaty and agreement should be developed and evaluated. Both China and Russia have demonstrated their capability to degrade and/or destroy adversaries’ satellites in space. Space wars are no longer a hypothetical. The future once discussed and anxiously anticipated after Sputnik …

Autonomous Cyber Capabilities And The International Law Of Sovereignty And Intervention, Michael N. Schmitt

International Law Studies

This article explores the intersection of autonomous cyber capabilities and two primary rules of international law—the respect for the sovereignty of other States and the prohibition on coercive intervention into another State's internal or external affairs. Of all the rules of international law, these are the likeliest to be violated through employment of cyber capabilities, whether autonomous or not. This raises the question of whether a cyber operation that involves autonomous capabilities presents unique issues with respect to the application of the two rules. The article concludes that while there are numerous unsettled issues surrounding their application to cyber operations, …

Urban Warfare: Emerging Geopolitical Conundrum, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Urban warfare is as old as human history. It is becoming increasingly important in international political and military planning due to increasing global urbanization and the presence of megacities (urban areas with populations exceeding 10 million) in many global regions and being in areas of recent and potential military conflict. 2018 World Bank data notes that approximately 56% of the world's population lives in urban areas which is up from 34% in 1960. Many of these megacities, including New York City, Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, Mumbai, Shanghai, and Manila are adjacent to oceanic waters and vulnerable to trade and supply …

Strengthening The U.S.-Japan Alliance: Pathways For Bridging Law And Policy, Columbia Law School, 2020, Nobuhisa Ishizuka, Masahiro Kurosaki, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

During the three years leading up to this year ’s 60th anniversary of the signing of the 1960 U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, a series of workshops were held under the joint sponsorship of Columbia Law School’s Center for Japanese Legal Studies and the National Defense Academy of Japan’s Center for Global Security. Bringing together experts in international law and political science primarily from the United States and Japan, the workshops examined how differing approaches to use of force and understandings of individual and collective self-defense in the two countries might adversely affect their alliance.

The workshop participants explored the underlying causes …

How U.S. Government Policy Documents Are Addressing The Increasing National Security Implications Of Artificial Intelligence, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Artificial intelligence is affecting many areas of our lives and governmental policy. National security is one arena in which artificial intelligence is playing an increasingly important and controversial role. U.S. Government and military agencies are producing a steadily expanding corpus of publicly available literature on this topic. This literature documents how these agencies have this topic's national security implications historically and currently while also addressing potentially emerging national security issues where artificial intelligence will intersect with national security. This presentation demonstrates examples of the growing variety of publicly available national security artificial intelligence literature while also addressing the implications of …

The Popular But Unlawful Armed Reprisal, Mary Ellen O'Connell

Ohio Northern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

An International Tribunal For The Use Of Nuclear Weapons, Anthony J, Colangelo, Peter Hayes

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Although offenses against international law have been proscribed at a certain level of generality, nobody hitherto has examined closely the scientific and ecological damages that would be imposed by nuclear strikes in relation to resulting possible law-ofwar violations. To correct that information deficit and institutional shortfall, the first Part of this Article constructs a hortatory proposal for a tribunal for the use of nuclear weapons under international law. The second Part of the Article shows how such a tribunal statute would have a real-world effect on those charged with launching nuclear strikes and determining the legality of the strike orders. …

The Persecution Of Stones: War Crimes, Law's Autonomy And The Co-Optation Of Cultural Heritage, Timothy W. Waters

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In 1567, a bridge was built over a river in Bosnia-a bridge widely seen as a work of great beauty. In 1993, it was destroyed in a war. What did its destruction mean? Was it a crime-and which one? An assault on culture-and whose? Between 2004 and 2017, a trial held in The Hague sought to answer these questions. The way it did-the assumptions and categories the prosecutors and judges deployed, the choices they made-tells us something important about how law operates and how it appropriates other bodies of knowledge, whether in a now-obscure Balkan conflict or on the battlefields …