International Humanitarian Law

Nehal Bhuta is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Toronto and a member of the EJIL’s Scientific Advisory Board. . He has worked with the International Justice Program of Human Rights Watch and was a consultant with the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York. In 2008/2009 he is a Hauser Research Scholar…

These past few months have seen the emergence, or rather the beginning of the emergence of the Obama’s administration’s policy towards the fight against global terrorism. A significant part of that policy is the new administration’s relationship towards international law. While some have pointed out (disapprovingly or not) that the Obama administration is continuing many of the policies of its…

In his post below, Marko takes the view that the Obama administration position on the authority to detain in Guantanamo in internally contradictory and based on a misinterpretation of international humanitarian law. While I agree with Marko that some of the analysis offered by the Obama administration in its recent brief  is confused and confusing, I…

Yesterday the Obama administration filed a brief with the US District Court for the District of Columbia regarding its detention authority of persons previously classified by the Bush administration as 'enemy combatants.' (Analysis by Deborah Pearlstein at OJ; more from the Lift). The brief now outlines the administration's official position on the legal basis of the detention…