Case Study Discussions Class
This module is part of the online portion of the hybrid class. The material in this module was selected to provide examples of analysis and commentary on the challenges of lawyering peace in several complex cases. The following commentary provides legal analysis of several peace processes, accountability mechanisms, and self-determination movements in the following countries and regions: Yemen, Syria, Catalonia, Burma, Bosnia, Kurdistan, and North Korea. Please listen to the following podcasts and live-streams on lawyering peace:
Yemen: Talking Foreign Policy Radio: Untangling the Yemen Crisis, April 2019
In this episode, international and foreign policy experts examine the background of the Yemen conflict, discuss a possible roadmap to peace, and debate the issue of accountability. The experts include the former legal adviser to the UN peace negotiations in Yemen (Dr. Paul Williams); a law Professor who just returned from talks in Jordan with parties to the Yemen conflict (Associate Dean Milena Sterio of Cleveland Marshall College of Law); the former Chief of Prosecutions of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (Jim Johnson, Director of CWRU’s War Crimes Research Office); and a law student leader who organized CWRU’s Yemen Accountability Project (Dr. Laura Graham). Michael Scharf, Dean of Case Western Reserve University School of Law hosts the program. This episode features four members of PILPG, including PILPG cofounders Dr. Williams and Michael Scharf, PILPG board member Milena Sterio, and PILPG Senior Peace Fellow Jim Johnson.
North Korea: Talking Foreign policy radio: The North Korea Summit, May 2018
The United States and North Korea — two countries that fought a brutal war and never made peace. How did we get here and what is likely to come next? Host Michael Scharf, Dean of Case Western Reserve University School of Law and PILPG co-founder, and a panel of experts including Dr. Paul Williams and PILPG board member Milena Sterio, discuss the ramifications of President Trump’s decision to cancel the US-North Korea Summit.
Bosnia and Syria: Humanitarian Intervention in Syria
Dr. Paul Williams discusses the legal framework for international humanitarian intervention, drawing from his experiences in Bosnia, Syria, and more.
Catalonia and Kurdistan: The season of Self-Determination
PILPG Senior Research Associates Ana-Dionne Lanier and Kate Holcombe discuss the Catalonian and Kurdish independence movements and the implications of recent developments in the context of international principles of self-determination with Dr. Paul Williams.
Additional Material:
Humanitarian Intervention in Syria: R2P Strikes Back
An analysis of the Responsibility to Protect as a viable legal basis for the airstrikes by the Trump Administration in Syria, co-authored by Elise Meyer, PILPG Class of 2016 Law Fellow, and Dr. Williams, who was then appointed by the Catalonian Foreign Ministry to a Commission of International Experts on the Independence Referendum.
Shaping Foreign Policy in Times of Crisis
Shaping Foreign Policy in Times of Crisis, written by PILPG co-founders Michael Scharf and Paul R. Williams, grew out of a series of meetings that the authors convened with all ten of the living former U.S. State Department legal advisers (from the Carter administration to that of George W. Bush). Based on their insider accounts of the role that international law actually played during the major crises on their watch, the book explores whether international law is real law or just a form of politics that policymakers are free to ignore whenever they perceive it to be in their interest to do so. Written in a style that will appeal to the casual reader and serious scholar alike, the book includes a foreword by the Obama administration's State Department legal adviser, Harold Koh; background on the theoretical underpinnings of the compliance debate; and an in-depth case study of the treatment of detainees in the war on terror.
Click here to view Shaping Foreign Policy in Times of Crisis.