The rule of law has long been considered a cornerstone of American democracy, safeguarding individual rights, ensuring justice, and regulating the conduct of public officials within a framework of established laws. However, a troubling trend has emerged in recent years — a significant erosion of respect for this foundational principle. This decline is evidenced through [...]
In this piece Chris Blackburn, Communications Director of the European Bangladesh Forum and co-founder of Global Friends of Afghanistan, highlights the severe human rights abuses in Pakistan, including the misuse of blasphemy laws and the repression of political movements and activists, and calls for international actions such as Pakistan’s suspension from the Commonwealth to pressure [...]
As reported in a recent New York Times article, a group of doctors, nurses, and paramedics reported a cluster of what was claimed to be gunshot wounds to the heads of children in the crowded battle space of Gaza. No reasonable military mission scenario would allow such targeting. Though not explicitly stated, the piece strongly [...]
The US Supreme Court in some ways is a more prominent issue in this year’s election than it has been in most previous elections, although its influence on voters is uncertain. As in every presidential race for the past forty years, abortion is the focal point of discussions about how the election might affect the [...]
In the grand halls of the United Nations, where the fate of nations is debated, an increasingly urgent conversation is taking place. It’s a discussion about the very foundation of global security governance – the UN Security Council (UNSC). Calls for reform have been presented in academic circles, yet in the past few years, such [...]
More than three years since the military takeover by Taliban in 2021, Afghanistan remains engulfed in a severe human rights crisis. Extrajudicial killings, public executions, flogging in stadiums, and other forms of corporal punishment, arbitrary detentions, torture and disappearances of former government officials, members of the national security forces, judges, lawyers, human rights defenders, journalists, [...]
“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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
