Kevin Jon Heller
H-index:
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Reposted by: Kevin Jon Heller, John Horgan, Mary L. Dudziak
Spoke with @charliesavage.bsky.social about how the administration is trying to backfill a legal rationale for US strikes in the Caribbean.
Seems by "determining" there is an armed conflict—without any basis in fact or law—POTUS is giving himself a license to kill.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/u...
Seems by "determining" there is an armed conflict—without any basis in fact or law—POTUS is giving himself a license to kill.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/u...
Trump ‘Determined’ the U.S. Is Now in a War With Drug Cartels, Congress Is Told
www.nytimes.com
The talk is kindly co-sponsored by the Faculty of Law. It will be recorded but not live-streamed.
If you're in Copenhagen October 10, come see Andrew Cayley KC, who ran the Palestine investigation at the #ICC, give a
Centre for Military Studies talk entitled "The Future of International Criminal Justice: An Insider’s View." 15:00 at the Law Faculty. Register: cms.polsci.ku.dk/events/the-f...
Centre for Military Studies talk entitled "The Future of International Criminal Justice: An Insider’s View." 15:00 at the Law Faculty. Register: cms.polsci.ku.dk/events/the-f...
The Future of International Criminal Justice: An Insider’s View
International Criminal Justice is facing a tipping point. Questions about its efficacy, its efficiency and a hostile political climate are raising doubts about its relevance and, even further, its ver...
cms.polsci.ku.dk
I have finished the first draft of my new article, "A Stillborn Green Revolution: How Elite Activism During the Vietnam War Undermined Wartime Environmental Protection and Doomed the Crime of Ecocide." 33K words, 535 footnotes. Can't wait to share it!
*Now* it cares about federal statutes?
Dan Lamothe
@danlamothe.bsky.social
· Sep 4
(9) If the US really believes its self-defence and armed conflict claims, it should make the case, not offer cursory and confused statements like Kelly's. I won't be holding my breath.
(8) Killing the individuals on the boat was murder. A state with jurisdiction over the killings -- such as one that applies passive personality jurisdiction to the crime of murder and had a national on board -- is entitled to prosecute any of the perpetrators in its domestic courts.
(7) The killings were unlawful under IHRL because they were neither proportionate (the traffickers did not pose an imminent threat to life) nor necessary (the US admits it attacked the boat to send a message to traffickers, not because it could not be interdicted and boarded).
(6) Because the attack on the boat did not take place as part of an armed conflict, the US cannot invoke IHL rules permitting lethal force against combatants or civilians directly participating in hostilities to justify the killings. The killings were governed by IHRL.
(5) As I tweeted yesterday, there is no coherent argument that the attack on the boat was governed by IHL. Although it is conceivable that a state could be engaged in a NIAC with a drug-trafficking organization, nothing indicates that this boat was connected to such a NIAC.
(4) Even if a state did have a right of individual self-defence agains the boat, the US could not attack the boat in collective self-defence unless the state with the individual right requested US assistance. The ICJ made that requirement clear in the Nicaragua case.
(3) Because no state, not even one affected by drug trafficking, had an individual right of self-defence against the boat, the US had no legal right to attack the boat in "collective self-defence." The latter depends on the former.
(2) Similarly, the US is not entitled to use of force in self-defence to protect its "national interests," no matter how vital they might be. Again: self-defence is permissible only in response to an armed attack.
(1) Drug trafficking is not an "armed attack" that gives rise to the right of self-defence, no matter how much harm it might cause to a state's population. Indeed, drug trafficking is neither an "attack" nor "armed." This is not controversial.
Here is Kelly's statement: the attack was in “in the collective self-defense of other nations who have long suffered due to the narcotics trafficking and violent cartel activities of such organizations... [and] was fully consistent with the law of armed conflict.”
Typically excellent article from Charlie Savage. But I wish he had spent a bit more time on the international-law issues. The statement by Anna Kelly, the White House spokesperson, is remarkable for how much it manages to get wrong in a mere 42 words.
Reposted by: Kevin Jon Heller, Robert Black
President Trump is expected to sign an executive order tomorrow giving the Defense Department a "secondary title" as the Department of War. White House officials now confirming.
Looks like a way to use the title while juggling the law -- the 1947 National Security Act -- that gave DoD its name.
Looks like a way to use the title while juggling the law -- the 1947 National Security Act -- that gave DoD its name.
Wherein I further endear myself to the Trump administration by making clear that the attack on the Venezuelan drug-trafficking boat was a clear violation of international human rights law. (My thanks to @elizlanders.bsky.social for the interview.) video.snapstream.net/Play/1LL3E8j...
Scripps News - 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM - U.S. Strikes Venezuelan Narco-Boat, Raising Legal Concerns
And here is the clip featuring your intv! Thank you! - Powered by SnapStream Cloud Sharing
video.snapstream.net
Trump Claims the Power to Summarily Kill Suspected Drug Smugglers
The move to treat criminals as if they were wartime combatants escalated an administration pattern of using military force for law enforcement tasks at home and abroad.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/04/u...
The move to treat criminals as if they were wartime combatants escalated an administration pattern of using military force for law enforcement tasks at home and abroad.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/04/u...
Trump Claims the Power to Summarily Kill Suspected Drug Smugglers
www.nytimes.com
If you're interested, you can find the ad at 4'11" in the video below. Apparently the room full of Madison Avenue ad men erupted with approval when the ad won the Clio, indicating the depth of mainstream opposition to the Vietnam War. www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNjr...
Vietnam War: Help Unsell the War. 7 TV-Spots, 1971
YouTube video by Clips From the Past
www.youtube.com
Fun fact: in 1972, "Apple Pie," a TV ad created by religious antiwar activists and Mad Men that decried US tax dollars being spent on “bombs instead of schools, defoliation instead of clean air and water, tanks instead of trains," won the Clio Award -- Madison Avenue's Oscar.
Apparently the US has now sanctioned both #ICC Deputy Prosecutors, Khan and Niang, as well as Judge Guillou of France and Judge Prost of Canada. sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov
Sanctions List Search
sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov
Disturbing fact of the day: between 1965 and 1973, the US used nearly 31 billion pounds of munitions in Indochina, more than 7X the total amount used in WW II -- and equivalent to dropping one Hiroshima-sized atomic bomb on Indochina every five days for eight years, 600 in all.
I miss the good old days when rugged, square-jawed, non-woke white warriors led the US Armed Forces to glorious victory. Warriors like Gen. William Westmoreland in Vietnam.
Reposted by: Kevin Jon Heller
Exclusive: ICC arrest warrant applications ready for Israel's Ben Gvir and Smotrich on apartheid charges - https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/icc-arrest-warrant-applications-ready-israel-itamar-ben-gvir-bezalel-smotrich-apartheid-charges
Exclusive: ICC arrest warrant applications ready for Israel's Ben Gvir and Smotrich on apartheid charges
The applications are in the hands of two deputy prosecutors in Karim Khan's absence, but ICC sources are concerned they will not submit them for fear of sanctions
www.middleeasteye.net
Reposted by: Kevin Jon Heller, Michael D. Robinson
