A recent verdict offers a rare glimmer of hope for accountability for those who have suffered human rights violations due to the actions of U.S. companies. 

The international system empowers every nation to act independently: to enforce the rules, or to ignore them. The future of the global order—and everything it has delivered to the world—depends on what they decide.

The policy makes some procedural improvements, but overall it’s a missed opportunity.

Addressing the problem of impunity requires addressing not just the absence of criminal accountability for the clearly unlawful acts of the president in the United States but also the long-standing absence of accountability for the clearly unlawful acts of the president and the government the president leads around the globe.

Nonamendment reform can enable the body to meet the challenges of the moment when the Security Council is paralyzed by the veto.

The UN Security Council’s paralysis amid the war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict has deepened skepticism about the body’s capacity to advance collective security and promote the rule of law.

If the United States and Israel truly believe there is no legal basis for the charges by the International Criminal Court, they should call the ICC prosecutor’s bluff. Israel should launch a genuine investigation of its own. 

An examination of the history of the laws of war, which are clearly failing non-combatants as responses to terror attacks like October 7 and 9/11 that target civilians end up costing the lives of many more civilians since as many as a million died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If the law of war is to survive today’s existential challenges, the United States and its allies need to treat it not as an optional constraint to be adjusted or shrugged off as needed but as an unmoving pillar of the global legal order.

Who pays for the terrible destruction wrought by war? Throughout history, reparations following interstate conflict have proven troublingly elusive for most victim States.