asymmetrical haircuts

There were some pretty intense weeks at the end of June with Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear sites and the United States joining in. Suddenly – as happens regularly, we find – everyone, including NATO’s leaders, became experts in international law. So….we talked to an expert who thinks states – especially his own, the United States – have been bending and interpreting ‘the law’ for a long time already.

Samuel Moyn is the Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University. He’s written a tonne of books including Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. He’s the kind of professor who uses jus ad bellum (the laws of going to war) and jus in bello (the laws of conducting conflicts) without breaking a sweat.

Steph and Samuel were both listening to the same podcast – JIB/JAB – about the Caroline incident from which a lot of the arguments about the nature of imminent threats were derived. (You can also hear Craig Martin on our pod here). Steph also listened to the Called to the Bar podcast focusing on the Caroline case.

We’ve done some other podcasts on what on earth is going on in recent months with Janina Dill and Oona Hathaway if you want to check back. We talk about the new Special Tribunal on Aggression against Ukraine. The Council of Europe has a handy fact sheet for more details. [I’m personally bummed that no-one is using the weird acronym STCoA that was being banded about over last couple of years. I mean, who doesn’t love an acronym that sounds like you’ve just had a shot of vodka and need to violently cough]. Samuel also mentioned he still has a soft spot for the ICTY and especially the Tadic case.

Since he is now writing on ‘aging and politics constitutionalism and democracy’ he recommended Helen Small’s The Long Life which the blurb says is: “The first major study of old age in philosophy and literature since Beauvoir’s The Coming of Age – essential reading for anyone interest in old age as a personal or public matter of interest”.

This podcast has been produced as part of a partnership with JusticeInfo.net, an independent website in French and English covering justice initiatives in countries dealing with serious violence. It is a media outlet of Fondation Hirondelle, based in Lausanne, Switzerland.

In this Justice Update we take a bit of a detour from our usual subject of war crimes and turn to issues of trauma and care for veterans of wars. Janet has spent time the last few years listening to military veterans and military psychologists and psychiatrists talking about trauma and war.

She was asked to help out with a few conferences in Lithuania and Ukraine where she moderated panels and got to know a tonne of people engaged in that field. In that capacity Janet ran into retired Canadian General and former senator Roméo Dallaire. 

The general is best known internationally for his exposure of the trauma he went through as the U.N. commander in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, and his commitment to supporting soldiers and their families. Daillaire was also the subject of one of our Patreon bookclub episodes dealing with his 2003 book Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. 

Janet spoke to the general and his wife Maire-Claude Michaud about what combattants and their families can experience after they come home from the front lines. You can see a video of the trip General Daillaire and Michaud took to visit Ukrainian soldiers here.