
International and Humanitarian Law: News Releases and In the News
Blank: War reparations for Ukraine
Blank: Mounting evidence of war crimes in Ukraine
Blank: International laws that might hold Putin accountable
Blank: The difference between war crimes, genocide
Blank: Targeting civilians could violate international law
Blank: Russian invasion flagrant breach of international law
Blank: War in Ukraine a 'dangerous moment' for the world
Dudziak: Afghanistan reinforces need for U.S. military restraint
Legal historian Mary Dudziak elected to Council on Foreign Relations
Mary Dudziak has been elected a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher.
Blank: Experts Question Trump’s Focus on Syrian Oil Fields
U.S. President Donald Trump has made protecting Syria's oil reserves a top priority, and is deploying U.S. troops to the oil fields even as he pulled American forces out of the border area with Turkey, clearing the way for a Turkish military assault earlier this month on the Kurds. Experts quoted by VOA, including International Humanitarian Law Clinic Director Laurie Blank question Trump's focus on the oil fields.
Trump policy of conquest 'doesn't exist anymore' Blank says
President Donald Trump reiterated his intention to keep some American troops in Syria to control the country's eastern oilfields. Experts, including International Humanitarian Law Clinic Director Laurie Blank, warn the president's comments could promote the view that the U.S. involvement in the Middle East is to extort revenue.
Dudziak: Unveil secret counsel that influences the president
"The recent saber rattling against Iran raises the question of whether the president can take the country to war on his own," Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law Mary L. Dudziak writes for The Hill. Much of the legal counsel a president receives comes from the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel. "But many Office of Legal Counsel opinions remain secret decades after the fact. Because of this, a body of secret law has become a building block of contemporary presidential power," Dudziak says.
Dudziak: Why Congress should challenge Trump on Yemen war
A group of constitutional scholars and lawmakers want House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to take President Donald Trump to the Supreme Court over the war in Yemen. Vox quoted Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law Mary L. Dudziak on why. It's unconstitutional for a president to unilaterally involve the U.S. in war. "Especially since 9/11, Congress has let power accumulate in the executive branch," Dudziak said. "And Congress does that by sitting back and not objecting, which is why Pelosi's role is really important right now."
Dudziak for the Washington Post: Korea's toxic legacy
"The collapse of talks between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jung Un in Hanoi means that Pyongyang's nuclear program will continue--and so, too, will the still unresolved Korean War, now nearly 70 years old," Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law Mary Dudziak writes in an opinion article for the Washington Post. "The war, which ended with a truce but not a peace treaty, is famously forgotten in the United States, but it is invoked as legal authority every time a president sends U.S. troops overseas without congressional authorization."
Lawfare podcast features Blank on the future of war
Laurie Blank, director of the International Humanitarian Law Clinic, recently spoke on the evolution of warfare and predictions about what's next. "From the increasing development of autonomous weapons systems to the expansion of the traditional battlefield to cyber and outer space, the evolution of warfare invites ethical and legal questions about what the future holds," says the Lawfare blog. The panel discussion was held in November 2018, moderated by former Air Force and Army general counsel Chuck Blanchard.
Dudziak: 1968 marks a judicial watershed
Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law Mary Dudziak is quoted in Political News on the end of the Warren U.S. Supreme Court.
Recent Yemen strikes raise questions about self-defense, Blank says
After the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. responded in self-defense against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan "and has since used force against al Qaeda and several affiliated groups from Pakistan to Yemen to Syria to Somalia and beyond," Emory Law's Laurie Blank writes in a column for Jurist. It raises two important questions, she says. "How long does self-defense last ... and how far can a state go--both in the geographic sense and in the sense of the legitimate aims of using force--when acting in self defense?"
Blank: Talk of secret prisons raises 'a huge red flag'
Black sites and extraordinary renditions indicate by their very name that they lie outside the norm of ordinary behavior, writes Laurie Blank, director of Emory Law's International Humanitarian Law Clinic. Reports that President Trump is preparing an executive order that could reinstate the use of secret overseas prisons for detention and interrogation would violate international law, she writes in an op-ed for The Hill.
Trump's idea to take Iraq's oil illegal, Blank says
Presidential candidate Donald Trump's assertion he would "take all the oil out of Iraq," violates international law, says Laurie Blank, director of the International Humanitarian Law Clinic. "There is a remarkably robust and comprehensive framework of law that applies specifically in war to regulate the conduct of hostilities and the protection and treatment of persons," she writes for Jurist. "Occupation is not a license to bleed a country dry," she adds. "The days of war as conquest are long over."
Trump's proposed oil grab violates Geneva Convention, Blank says
Donald Trump's stance that the U.S. should have taken oil out of Iraq following the 2003 invasion would have been a violation of the fourth Geneva Convention and likely other international agreements, Laurie Blank tells the Wall Street Journal. Blank is director of Emory Law's International Humanitarian Law Clinic. "Under the fourth Geneva Convention, when you are an occupying power, you are a caretaker, you are administering the territory," she said. "The idea is to keep it as close to status quo as possible and give it back. It's not yours to do with it what you want."
Blank for CNN: Declaring ISIS guilty of genocide triggers obligation to act
Under U.S. law, a designation of genocide opens the door to prosecuting any person alleged to be responsible for this heinous international law violation "even if the location, defendant and victims had no connection to the U.S.," Laurie Blank, director of the International Humanitarian Law Clinic writes for CNN. Unlike a congressional resolution, Thursday's statement by Secretary of State John Kerry that ISIS has committed genocide triggers an obligation "to take measures to prevent and punish the crime."
Blank: Tough talk on torture violates America's stance against inhumanity
Presidential candidate Donald Trump has declared waterboarding would be merely an introductory interrogation technique, Director of the International Humanitarian Law Clinic Laurie Blank writes in an op-ed for The Hill. "The dangers of this rhetoric are enormous. Torture is illegal," she says. "Tough talk of torture, enhanced interrogation techniques and carpet-bombing may make good campaign copy, but such rhetoric and acts not only violate the law, but ultimately undermine the very essence of leadership and morality."
Blank for The Hill: What the U.N. Report on Gaza left out
A United Nations Human Rights Council report on the 2014 Gaza conflict provides 183 pages of facts, legal analysis and conclusions about the conduct of Israeli forces, Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza. Unfortunately, the report is replete with faulty legal analysis, unjustified presumptions and an astounding willingness to take Hamas' claims at face value coupled with an unrelenting skepticism about Israeli efforts to comply with the law of war, writes Laurie Blank, director of the International Humanitarian Law Clinic.
Blank for The Hill: Hard questions for Guantanamo
Last week, the director of National Intelligence (DNI) announced that 116 of the 647 Guantanamo detainees that have been released had returned to terrorist or insurgent activities. When critics call detainee releases reckless because there are still individuals and groups out there posing a threat to the United States, they once again bury the hard questions under rhetoric and hype. In effect, they once again merely kick the proverbial can--how to make the necessary distinctions for principled application of the law and address the concomitant uncertainties--down the road.
Laurie Blank for The Hill: "Torture is illegal under U. S., international, and other national laws"
Torture is illegal during wartime, peacetime, counterterrorism operations and any other circumstances.
Blank discusses counterterrorism at panel led by Richemond-Barak
Daphne Richemond-Barak heads the International Law Desk of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT). She led a panel titled, "New Battlefields/Old Laws: The Next Steps in Counterterrorism: Adapting to an Evolving Threat and an Expanding Battlefield," with guests Laurie Blank, Professor William C. Banks, Professor Jennifer Daskal, and Professor Nathan Sales.
Blank speaks on international law at ICT 14th World Summit
Edan Landau discusses international law in a new urban war zone with Professor Laurie Blank and her frequent co-author Geoffrey Corn, professor of law and presidential research scholar at South Texas College of Law.
Blank: Getting the law right on the Israel-Hamas conflict
In an age when both real and perceived violations of international law have a substantial effect on the legitimacy of state action, getting it wrong is way more than just bad journalism.
Blank in Jurist: Hamas use of civilians as shields is a war crime
In any conflict, all parties ¿ states, rebel groups and terrorist organizations ¿ must protect civilians from the ravages of war and take steps to minimize harm to civilians. For each party, these obligations take two primary forms: protecting civilians in the areas where it is attacking, and protecting its own civilians from the consequences of attacks by the enemy party.