Marine science and technology have long been recognized as key issues to enable states to implement the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Scientific capacity development and technology transfer are cross-cutting issues in the development of a new international legally binding instrument (ILBI) for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction under UNCLOS. The acquisition, exchange, and application of scientific knowledge are critical issues in the development of the ILBI.

Violent organizations with extreme ideologies such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are often characterized as lawless, irrational, and therefore difficult or even impossible to predict and understand. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, I argue that many armed extremist groups across history and around the world share a common element: law-like systems of rules that they use to justify violence, regulate the conduct of civilians as well as their own members, and to transform social, political, and economic institutions in ways that will advance their ideological and strategic objectives. In Part I, I lay out a new research agenda for the study of “insurgent legality,” arguing that legal scholars and practitioners should take seriously the internal regulatory and governance systems of violent and criminal non-state actors in order to understand not only how these groups emerge and establish legitimacy in the eyes of their members and supporters, but also how their legitimacy can be undermined. In the case of rebel insurgent groups like the Islamic State, I argue that an insurgent group's establishment of a legal system that is perceived by the local population as relatively more effective and fairer than that of the state it seeks to overthrow or secede from can greatly facilitate its capture and governance of territory. But if, over time, the insurgent group's system of law and governance becomes increasingly flawed by procedural injustice, corruption, discrimination against marginalized groups, increasing taxes without corresponding improvements in rights and services, and arbitrary violence, it will lose local support and become more vulnerable to collapse under pressure from growing internal threats of public resistance and infighting as well as the external threat of military defeat.

In Part II, I test and find support for this theory with qualitative and quantitative data collected over the course of more than two years of field research in Iraq and southern Turkey including: an original household survey of 1,458 residents of the Islamic State's former capital city, Mosul; in-depth interviews with more than two hundred Syrians and Iraqis who lived under the Islamic State's rule; and a dataset of more than 1,500 primary source documents that maps the expansion and eventual retreat of the Islamic State's governance and lawmaking activities across time and space in all twenty-two Syrian districts that the group controlled to some extent between 2013 and 2017. Consistent with my theory, this data demonstrates the importance of legal institutions both for the Islamic State's initial success and the ultimate failure of its state-building project. Part III discusses the lessons learned and broader implications of this research for post-conflict peace-building, transitional justice, and countering the potential resurgence of the Islamic State that are informed not only by my academic research but also by my practical experience working with United Nations agencies in Iraq on these issues. I conclude by suggesting that my theory of insurgent legality can be extended to study the internal regulatory and governance systems of other violent or criminal non-state actors in very different contexts including drug cartels, white supremacist movements, pirates, and ransomware hackers.

Following the International Law Commission Report on Fragmentation in International Law (IL), scholars have started to question whether such fragmentation could also have affected its subbranches, and, especially, international human rights law (IHRL). Due to the proliferation of both IHRL norms and institutions, especially at the regional level, this appeared to be a real possibility.

Since the end of the Cold War it has become clear that non-state actors (NSA)1 can have a substantial impact on situations affecting international peace and security.2 Although the authority of the Security Council to directly address NSA is not uncontroversial, it is clear that as a practical matter the Council does exercise this authority regularly.3 My remarks will address this practice and explain its legal significance.

My comments will address not only consensual uses of force in an armed conflict paradigm, but also a variety of other uses of force inside another state's territory with consent, such as renditions and targeted killings. I want to examine the effect that the use of consent has on the international law ecosystem. In my view, consent has both positive and negative effects on this ecosystem. I do not plan to come down on one side or the other in assessing the overall balance; instead, I simply will identify consent's effects. Nor am I focused on the quality of the consent given by the territorial state; I will assume that the consent is technically sound.

In assessing the legality of the killing of Osama bin Laden one is reminded of a saying about the situation in Lebanon. If you think you understand it, it has not been properly explained to you.

Of course, one major obstacle is that we do not have all the facts. However, we also do not have all the law.

The complexity of analyzing the legality of the killing begins with the threshold issue of applicable law. Is the conduct to be analyzed according to domestic law or international law? If domestic law, then which country’s domestic laws are applicable? Certainly that of the United States and Pakistan would be applicable. Saudi law might also apply (e.g., on the basis of nationality), in addition to the laws of those countries that have another basis under their domestic law for exercising extraterritorial jurisdiction (e.g., on the universality principle).