...and counting...

(Occasional sobering thoughts.) The United States, France, and other countries intervened militarily against Libya's government yesterday -- the 8th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Participation by France (under President Nicolas Sarkozy) departed from the earlier script, when France (under President Jacques Chirac) vocally opposed intervention and so thwarted the United States' bid for U.N. Security Council authorization.
This time around, France pushed earlier and hard for a Security Council resolution. Some officials in the United States initially resisted. But as predicted nearly a month ago by our Opinio Juris colleague Chris Borgen, a tweet heard 'round the world (below center, by Anne-Marie Slaughter, who just finished a 2-year stint as the head of policy planning at the State Department) seemed to set the stage for support by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and, eventually, President Barack Obama.


Five of the 15 Security Council states, including China, Russia, and Germany, abstained from Resolution 1973, which was billed as a no-fly resolution during early negotiations, yet included this paragraph authorizing greater intervention:

Protection of civilians
4. Authorizes Member States that have notified the Secretary-General, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, and acting in cooperation with the Secretary-General, to take all necessary measures, notwithstanding paragraph 9 of resolution 1970 (2011), to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory, and requests the Member States concerned to inform the Secretary-General immediately of the measures they take pursuant to the authorization conferred by this paragraph which shall be immediately reported to the Security Council; ....

Hence yesterday's Tomahawk strikes on Libyan air defense systems. Hence, too, today's complaint from an advocate of the no-fly zone -- the leader of the Arab League said "the use of force was excessive following an overnight bombing campaign that Libya claims killed at least 48 people."
The Security Council-endorsed actions are taking place in the name of civilians. A noble cause, yet one without end. If Libya, why not other countries whose governments harm their own people? To name one, why not Côte d'Ivoire, site of tragic deaths amid months-long post-election violence?
As made explicit in the preamble to Resolution 1973, the Security Council resolved to act in the name of the fledgling doctrine of responsibility to protect. The Council's choice of Libya, to the exclusion of other global trouble spots, exposes once again the unsettling selection bias inherent in current conceptualizations of that doctrine.
Unsettling too is the notion of a 3d (or 4th, depending on how one counts AfPak) armed conflict in which the United States is engaged -- and in which civilian deaths are likely to occur even in the course of efforts to protect civilians.
While waiting to see what transpires on the Libyan front, it is due time to review casualties since our last post, 16 weeks ago, in the long-running conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
► In Afghanistan, "[t]argeted killings of civilians in Afghanistan doubled" in 2010, according to an annual report recently issued by the United Nations. Specifically, there was "a 15 percent increase in the number of civilians killed to 2,777 -- continuing a steady rise over the past four years" in the nearly decade-old conflict.
The U.S. Department of Defense reports that in Afghanistan, coalition military casualties stand at 1,505 Americans, 360 Britons, and 507 other coalition servicemembers. That's an increase of 89, 15, and 23 casualties, respectively, in the last 16 weeks. The total coalition casualty count in the Afghanistan conflict is 2,372 service women and men.
► Respecting the Iraq War launched 8 years ago this weekend -- a milestone observed by scattered protests --Iraq Body Count reports that between 100, 051 and 109,318 Iraqi women, children, and men have died in the conflict in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. That represents an increase of between 1,030 and 1,224 persons since 16 weeks ago. According to the U.S. Defense Department, 4,440 American servicemembers have been killed in Iraq, representing 11 servicemember deaths in the last 16 weeks. (As posted, U.S. troops are the only foreign forces remaining in Iraq.)

On November 13

On this day in ....

... 1920 (90 years ago today), the American Society of International Law (seal at left) admitted women to its membership. This decision by the then-14-year-old organization was chronicled at 15 American Journal of International Law 76 (1921). Given the importance of the event -- and the fact that on this anniversary day, ASIL's 2010 midyear meeting is under way in Miami, Florida -- we set forth the full AJIL account:

ADMISSION OF WOMEN TO MEMBERSHIP IN THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

At the meeting of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, held in Washington on November 13, 1920, the Council took up and considered the resolution of the Executive Committee of the Society, adopted on January 24, 1920, that "the Executive Council be requested to reconsider the regulation of January 29, 1906, which it has established under Article 3 of the Constitution in regard to membership." This resolution of the Executive Committee was adopted after discussion of the advisability of admitting women to membership in the Society. The Executive Council at its meeting on November 13, after consideration, adopted the following resolution:

Resolved, That the regulation of January 29, 1906, concerning the admission of members be, and it is hereby, amended by changing the word 'man' to 'person'.

The regulation governing admission to membership, therefore, now reads as follows:

Any person of good moral character interested in the objects of the Society may be admitted to membership in the Society.

In the interim 90 years, 4 women have served s ASIL Presidents:

► Dr. Alona Evans (top right; prior post), 1980;

► Dr. Edith Brown Weiss (middle right; prior posts), 1992-1994;

► Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter (bottom middle; prior posts), 2002-2004; and

► IntLawGrrl Lucy Reed (above center; prior posts), 2008-2010.

(Prior November 13 posts are here, here, and here.)

Aren't there any influential women thinkers?

Brian Leiter has opened a poll on his Law School blog on who the “most important thinker in American law” in the 20^th century was/is. All the eleven individuals named on the poll are, without question, influential legal thinkers. Here’s the list:
► Bruce Ackerman
► Guido Calabresi
► Benjamin Cardozo
► Ronald Dworkin
► Richard Epstein
► Lon Fuller
► Henry M Hart Jnr
► Kart Llewellyn
► Richard Posner
► Roscoe Pound
► Herbert Wechsler

They are not all American, which I guess must mean that Leiter intended to ask who had the most impact on American legal thought generally rather than who was the most influential American thinker. In addition, all of the individuals on the list are lawyers or legal philosophers—non-lawyers like Foucault (left), for example, make no appearance. Most strikingly, perhaps, is the complete absence of women thinkers on the list. What might the explanations be? Well, let us look first at the selection criteria used to put the list together:

(1) for those born in the 19th-century, most of the thinker's important work must have been done in the 20th-century; (2) those thinkers who are still alive must have entered the profession in the 1960s or earlier; (3) the thinker must have made contributions in more than one field; (4) the thinker's contributions must have had a wide-ranging impact on American legal thinking and scholarship.

These selection criteria themselves make the inclusion of women somewhat difficult on the list—entering the academic profession as a woman in the 1960s or earlier was a particularly difficult task, although of course if the third criterion were interpreted as meaning ‘entering the legal profession including entering law school’ in the 1960s or earlier many more female scholars may be eligible for the list.
If we were to put together a list that was more inclusive—let’s say one that did not have the ‘entered the profession in the 1960s’ cut-off point (which seems to somewhat undermine the impact of those scholars who entered later and still managed to have an enormous influence on legal thought)—who might we include on such a list? Some examples come immediately to my mind: Martha Nussbaum (pictured right), Ann Marie Slaughter, Martha Fineman, Kimberlé Crenshaw and Margaret Radin, for example.
What are your thoughts on the list, the selection criteria, and the women thinkers who have had the most influence on American legal thought?

Slaughter leads Policy Planning at State

Kudos to our colleague Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter (left), who's just completed her 3d week as the new Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State.

Slaughter had been serving as Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. (Prior IntLaw Grrls posts here and here.) Before that, she was the J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign and Comparative Law and the Director of Graduate and International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, and also taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School and the University of Chicago Law School. She served as President of the American Society of International Law from 2002 to 2004.

For hints at what State policies Slaughter might plan, take a look at her 2 most recent books, The Idea That Is America: Keeping Faith With Our Values in a Dangerous World (2008) and A New World Order (2004), and her 2008 comment in an ASIL feature on the Presidential race:

The most important question facing the next president is how to restore American respect for international law, in both perception and reality. Because of the dramatic rejection of international legal constraints in the first administration of George W. Bush, even fair-minded efforts to return to the rule of law in some areas in recent years has had little impact. The hardest legal issue, but one that simply must be addressed, is to agree on a set of interpretations of the Geneva Conventions, or perhaps even amendments, that define clearly what is permissible and impermissible in interrogating individuals suspected of terrorism who may have detailed knowledge about future attacks. The next task, which must be pursued simultaneously, is to revive and update the Non-Proliferation Treaty, with the full commitment of the United States to live up to our part of the bargain. Many other issues come to mind, but overall, the next President will have to decide on a menu of both symbolic and substantive acts and carry them out quickly and decisively. He or she will have to remind the American people, and convince the world, that the best safeguard of liberty is not force, but law.

Heartfelt congratulations!