International Humanitarian Law

Few figures in international law have witnessed and influenced its development as much as Judge Theodor Meron. A Holocaust survivor who became a leading scholar, government legal adviser, diplomat and international judge, his unique reflections offer a first-hand account, built over decades of experience, of how international law is formed, interpreted, and applied under pressure.  I…

“The test of a first-rate intelligence,” according to F. Scott Fitzgerald, “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” For international lawyers in these times of the Board of Peace and the Gaza Riviera, this kind of functional cognitive dissonance has become less a…

In the four years since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the prospects of a negotiated peace settlement have waxed but mostly waned. But the possibility of an agreement has been an ongoing focus for international lawyers. This is primarily because Russia has demanded territorial concessions from Ukraine that appear at odds with…

Introduction Advances in battlefield medicine have transformed the legal relevance of the principle of unnecessary suffering in international humanitarian law—but the legal community has not yet absorbed this transformation. For most of the history in which the relevant legal standards developed, certain vascular injuries caused in armed conflict were almost invariably fatal or resulted in amputation.