15 July 2011 | CIL Seminar Series
The Law of Military Force in a Time of Revolutions
Introduction
This lecture addressed the legal and policy options available to government officials and their legal advisors considering military operations overseas. A pragmatic but principled approach to international law is necessary when planning and executing military operations because applicable international laws are anachronistic but unlikely to be revised.
UN Charter provisions and customary laws governing when governments may use armed force abroad are unsuited to preserving global order and human rights in a time of revolutions, internecine wars, and terrorism. However, the UN Charter will not realistically be amended, nor will customary laws change quickly.
Thus, legal advisors and government officials may have to consider unlawful military operations when national security or basic human rights are threatened. If officials launch an armed attack that does not comply with the laws of war, they should generally provide reasons for their decision. This is necessary to discourage other governments from subsequently relying on that departure from international law as a basis for launching armed attacks that are unjustified on legal or policy grounds. This approach may help preserve minimum global order while protecting vital state interests.
This lecture surveyed the provisions of UN Charter and customary international laws regulating the use of force, and appraised them in light of military operations in Iraq in 1990 and 2003, as well as in Kosovo in 1999. Building on these prior case-studies, the lecture concluded with a discussion of military interventions in the revolutions that were unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa.
About the Speaker
Tai-Heng Cheng is Professor of Law at New York Law School, where he has been since 2006. He is Co-Director of the Institute for Global Law, Justice, & Policy, and of the NYU-NYLS International Economic Law Working Group.
Professor Cheng has authored almost forty books, articles and essays on international law, international dispute resolution and international investment law. His next book monograph, When International Law Works: Realistic Idealism After 9/11 and the Global Recession, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. His scholarship has been cited as authoritative by judges and counsel in the U.S. Supreme Court and federal appeals and district courts.
Professor Cheng is an elected member of the American Law Institute. He is also an elected member of the Executive Council of American Society of International Law. He chairs its Awards Committee, and co-chaired its 2011 Annual Meeting. He is a also member of the Academic Council of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration, and co-chair of its 2012 Annual Arbitration Workshop in Dallas, Texas. He is Honorary Fellow of the Foreign Policy Association, Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and a founding member of the Arbitration Club of New York.
He is also Senior Legal Advisor at the law firm of Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney, LLP, and has served as arbitrator, chair, expert, amicus curiae, and counsel in ICSCID, UNCITRAL, ICDR, ICC, SCC, and JAMS arbitrations, and in U.S. and Canada court proceedings. He is a member of the panels of neutrals of the ICDR, CPR, and HKIAC. He has advised the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor and the Republic of Kosovo on comparative and international law issues, including investment treaties.
Professor Cheng holds Doctor of the Science of Law and Master of Laws degrees from Yale Law School, where he was Howard M. Holtzmann Fellow for International Law. He also holds a Bachelor of Arts in law degree with First Class Honors from Oxford University, where he was an Oxford University Scholar.
