“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” — Winston Churchill As the world watches with bated breath, US President Donald Trump gears up for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, an encounter that echoes with eerie resonance the fateful meeting between British Prime Minister Neville [...]
When US President Donald J. Trump proposes that Russia and Ukraine “swap territories,” he is advocating multiple violations of international law and United States law. In essence, Russian President Vladimir Putin acquired Ukrainian territories by committing grievous acts of aggression, and thus has no conceivable legal right to keep them. Ipso facto, if Trump diplomacy [...]
I began publicly invoking the word “genocide” in July 2025 to describe the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza in response to the horrific Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, and the incomprehensible ongoing hostage crisis. Since that time, despite increasing agreement among liberal Jewish organizations over the use of this term, I [...]
The world is failing women and girls. With just five years left to accomplish the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), not a single country is on track to meet SDG 5: achieving gender equality. Governments cite excuses such as budget constraints or political instability, but a leading cause is the injustice that remains embedded [...]
“History is an illustrious war against death.” Jose Ortega y Gasset, Man and Crisis (1958) Policy Contexts and Legal Obligations Even after defeating Iran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah on tangible fields of battle, Israel has ample reason to stay vigilant against jihadi terrorism. In essence, Israel’s recent tactical successes have been partial and transient. This is [...]
Demographic decline, once dismissed as a niche obsession of “pronatalists” on the right, has increasingly gained mainstream media and scholarly attention in the United States. In this way the US is somewhat behind the curve; falling birthrates have long obsessed policymakers abroad, particularly in East Asia and Europe. Nevertheless, in popular US discourse, demographic decline [...]
Thinking about writing a legal commentary on the threats to naturalized and birthright citizens in the United States, it unexpectedly occurred to me to question Grok, the large language model (LLM) Elon Musk developed after the success of ChatGPT. Having taught law for decades using the Socratic method, I was curious how Grok would handle [...]
On the morning of June 13, 2025, the city of Tehran was rocked by deafening explosions. An unexpected Israeli military operation began, targeting nuclear and military facilities throughout Iran. Israel asserted that its actions were justified under the principle of ‘anticipatory self-defense,’ a concept that is narrowly defined in international law. However, the aftermath of [...]
The international order today is no longer shaped by classical geopolitics defined by territorial boundaries, military alliances, and traditional warfare. Instead, global power is increasingly exercised through what can be described as networked geopolitics. In this emerging paradigm, influence flows across interconnected systems of information, infrastructure, ideology, finance, and digital communication. Power now resides in [...]
Rising authoritarianism, armed conflicts, and technological upheaval are eroding the foundations of international law. One state, with no army, no economic might, and physically smaller than many college campuses, continues to exert global influence through the quiet power of moral authority and legal advocacy. The Vatican, long underestimated as a relic of medieval diplomacy, arguably [...]
