Self Defence

In a slightly extended version of Two Weeks in Review, we take in fundamental questions about what happens when law and lawyers seek or refuse to justify illegal actions, “relocation orders” issued by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon, the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, Australian soldiers and Belgian consular officials in domestic courts for international crimes, the…

There are moments when the international legal order reveals itself not through its rules but through the violence done in its name. Today’s expanding doctrine of self-defence—invoked with increasing ease, justified with decreasing care—is one such moment. It is tempting to read this as an unravelling, a slide into disorder. Yet what is unravelling here is not only…

Yesterday, the UK Government announced a significant change in its policy of allowing the United States to use British military bases during its war on Iran, solely to stop Iranian attacks on countries in the Gulf – I previously examined that issue here, and there was also an extensive discussion in the comments…

On March 6th, 2026, the United States re-ignited their pressure on Brazil to designate two major Brazilian crime syndicates, PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital) and Comando Vermelho, as “terrorist organizations”. In this post, I will introduce the U.S. practice to label Latin American drug syndicates “terrorist organizations”, and outline how this raises issues in relation…