Faculty Commentary

“For by Wise Counsel, Thou Shalt Make Thy War.” Proverbs 24.6 For mostly good reason, policy discussions of Israel’s nuclear strategy and doctrine have been intentionally vague and without evident nuance. More specifically, there have been few open-literature assessments of a limited nuclear war and its law-supported capacity for enhancing Israel’s strategic deterrence. Now, however, [...]

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The conservative justices on the Roberts Court consistently lecture the American people about the importance of text, history, and tradition to constitutional litigation. They use the term originalism as a catch-all phrase for their alleged focus on prior law. They want the American people to believe that their preferred outcomes are based on legal sources [...]

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Recent headlines brought a glimmer of hope to the women and girls whose lives under the Taliban have essentially been reduced to prison terms: Canada, Australia, Germany, and the Netherlands announced plans to bring the Taliban to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for gender discrimination. As an Afghan woman, I have been horrified to [...]

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The opening days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine triggered a fierce and inspiring response by ordinary Ukrainians. They joined together in a mass uprising to defend their homeland. Under international humanitarian law (IHL), such an act of resistance is known as a “levée en masse” (levée). A levée is a unique category that temporarily [...]

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The imperatives are plain. Whatever the trajectory of wars in the region, Israel has a law-based obligation to keep Iran non-nuclear. Immediately and incrementally, therefore, Jerusalem will need to ensure “escalation dominance” during periods of competitive risk-taking. This overriding responsibility concerns both Iran’s sub-state proxies (especially Shiite Hezbollah and Sunni Hamas) and Iran directly. What [...]

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© WikiMedia (Midnighttonight)

In this commentary, JURIST editor Caspian Rive a law and history honours student at Victoria University of Wellington argues that the New Zealand government should abandon the Treaty Principles Bill before it reaches Parliament. In Aotearoa New Zealand, there is no part of the constitution more wilfully misremembered than te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of [...]

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When analyzing an Israeli attack on Hezbollah using the principles of the law of armed conflict (LOAC)—specifically military necessity, proportionality, discrimination, and unnecessary suffering—it is critical to break down each principle and apply it to the given scenario. This analysis assumes that the attack involved the use of pagers and electronic detonation, targeting Hezbollah as [...]

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Does the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) preempt New York’s use of federal campaign finance violations to enhance Donald Trump’s criminal penalties for falsifying his New York business records? Professor Elizabeth Price Foley (Florida International University) and conservative media commentator David Rivkin argued in the Wall Street Journal last week that it does, since FECA [...]

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UK Parliament, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In this long read by James Joseph, Managing Editor for Long-Form Content and Lilian Trickey, a student at the University of Oxford, Faculty of Law, they unpack the case of whether removing hereditary peers from the House of Lords is a welcome democratic reform or risks undermining democracy.  In a move that would shake up [...]

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A month ago, we witnessed the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France, a 19-day sporting marvel where athletes from all corners of the world came together and pushed the limits of what is humanly possible. More than 200 countries participated in these Olympics, which also included two Individual Neutral Athletes (AIN) and a Refugee Team. AIN [...]

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