Ian Hurd's Latest Posts
On Law, Policy, and (Not) Bombing Syria
The question of whether the US should use its military against Assad is separate from the questions of legal interpretation. The legal question does not address the likely consequences of the use of force.
Whales, Law, and Science: Australia v. Japan at the ICJ
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) met recently to begin hearing its most prominent case in years. It pits two heavyweights, Australia and Japan, against each other.
Finnegans Wake and Political Science Methods
How do the methods of political science relate to the substantive problems that we want to study? Much energy has been spent arguing over the issues raise by this question — on the nature of science, the making of concepts, the meaning of explanation, and more. These are issues that arise across many domains of […]
Libya and Responsibility to Protect: Great-Power Permission or International Obligation?
The military attack on Libya in 2011 has rightly been interpreted as a significant milestone in the life of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine. It is the first UN military mission explicitly justified as a reaction to a government’s failure to live up its responsibility to protect its citizens. R2P activists have celebrated that it […]
