The black flag—history’s stark symbol of no quarter—is rising again on the battlefields of the 21st century. It is not raised openly, as in the age of pirates or medieval siege warfare. Instead, it appears in battlefield orders, intercepted communications, and the grim aftermath of combat where surrendering soldiers and unarmed civilians are found executed. [...]

I was born into a family where law was not merely a profession; it was the ordinary language of everyday life. Around our dinner table, conversations rarely drifted far from litigation. Someone was always recounting a difficult case, a stubborn judge, an ingenious defense, an unexpected verdict, or a client whose fate had become inseparable [...]

On Tuesday, August 11, after 22 years without an execution in Lebanon, the country’s parliament voted to abolish the death penalty, making it the first Arab country to formally scrap capital punishment. The new law replaces death sentences with life imprisonment with hard labor. And what was the only party on record in that country to [...]

Law does not exist only in statutes, regulations, and court decisions. Before law reaches courts, it already exists in society through the decisions people make every day. Legal scholars have long recognized this social dimension of law. Law is not experienced only through courts and legal institutions; it is also shaped by how ordinary people [...]

I remember that when I was a child, a platform had been built on a barren piece of land for executions. On nights when fog passed beside it, I would look at it with fear. I was afraid of it, yet I stared at it from a distance until we had passed it. Sometimes I [...]

When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth began publicly referring to himself as the Secretary of War and ordered Pentagon signage to reflect the historic title, many Americans assumed the United States had officially resurrected the pre‑1947 War Department. The imagery was striking: new placards at Pentagon entrances, press releases bearing the “Department of War” masthead, and [...]

Two rival claims of control are hardening around the Strait of Hormuz. By Aug. 14, transit had almost ground to a standstill. Washington said it could maintain its blockade of Iranian ports indefinitely. Tehran continued to link a full reopening to steps by the United States, while Iran’s Parliament advanced a domestic framework for the [...]

The subway doors open, and a dense stream of people begins to pour out of the train. For a brief moment, every face appears strangely familiar, not because they are identical, but because the movement of the crowd, the architecture of the station, and the limitations imposed by the narrow platform dissolve individual differences into [...]

When the head of Iraq’s Federal Board of Supreme Audit brought the board’s annual report before the Council of Representatives last week, Parliament did something it had not done since 2003: it convened a dedicated session to examine how the state had handled the public’s money. The report ran to tens of thousands of pages, [...]

Many Americans learned how to recite the Pledge of Allegiance even before we learned how to read it. Recited hand over heart, it ends with a promise: liberty and justice for all. What most Americans don’t know is that for millions of people living within our borders, that promise is being tested every day in [...]