Please join us for our Annual Meeting where we will elect the directors and officers for 2026-2027. Following the meeting, we will have a presentation by Dean Jens David Ohlin.

Drone strikes against boats. The capture of Venezuela’s president. Bombing nuclear enrichment sites. Targeted killings of Iranian leadership. These and other actions in the last year have brought renewed attention to the international law regarding the use of force, the Law of Armed Conflict, and human rights law. Dean Ohlin will clarify the legal standards applicable to these actions and will evaluate the legal arguments in favor, and against, these military operations. Evaluations of each individual operation should not obscure a deeper and more significant development—the ways in which international legal arguments are demanded and offered as a source of justification and the ways in which international law is sometimes silently ignored. Dean Ohlin will make the case that international law cannot be reduced to International Court of Justice decisions or Security Council resolutions. Rather, the lifeblood of international law is the way that nations use it to structure their debates about what is, and is not, permissible. Have we lost this too or will international law stubbornly prevail?