As security threats grow increasingly transnational, political discourse in the United States and Europe around how to address those threats is, ironically, turning increasingly nationalistic. Yet some of the greatest challenges facing the international community at the nexus of international law, justice, and policy are best addressed by looking both outward and inward, as the essays in this compendium seek to suggest.
“The Justice Stephen Breyer Lecture Series on International Law 2014-2016” is part of a body of work which seeks to address both traditional and cutting edge areas of international law where norms are still being tested and shaped. The wider project aims to explore complex and transnational themes such as countering violent extremism, cybersecurity and internet governance, and evolving forms of warfare to shape norms, guide jurisprudence, and offer frameworks for concrete policy solutions. Starting in 2014, this effort has featured an annual lecture series which addresses critical issues of international law and policy named for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
This compendium collects essays by the first three keynote speakers in the Justice Breyer lecture series with an introduction from Brookings Senior Fellow Ted Piccone.
Brookings Senior Fellow Ted Piccone frames the compendium with his thoughts on how international law serves U.S. national interests in an international order that has anchored decades of global peace and prosperity.
Continue ReadingSupreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer explores the development of U.S. and transnational legal norms in our modern, interconnected, and interdependent world.
Ambassador Ahmet Üzümcü, director-general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, examines the intersection of security and justice surrounding the elimination of Syria’s declared chemical weapons.
Legal scholar Harold Hongju Koh delves into the emerging law governing 21st century war in response to the rise of violent extremism and the use of new tools of warfare.
China has a strategic dilemma. They’re frustrated by the status quo, and they’re probing for ways to change it. But taking big, bold actions would come at an extraordinary cost to them. You can’t eliminate the possibility that they would be willing to pay that cost, and so we have to be prepared for it. But if you accept the proposition that war is inevitable, and we must do everything we possibly can to prepare for it now, then you risk precipitating the very outcome that your strategy is designed to prevent.