Leah Nicholls on the ICRC customary international humanitarian law study

Leah M. Nicholls, a law student at Duke Law School, has a new and very interesting article out - "The Humanitarian Monarchy Legislates: The International Committee of the Red Cross and Its 161 Rules of Customary International Humanitarian Law," 17 Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law 223. It doesn't seem to be up on SSRN, but here is the full text at the journal's website.

It's a provocative piece - one I am generally in sympathy with, although not a position likely to be popular among international law professors. (Ms. Nicholls thanks Duke Law professor Madeline Morris, one of the most consistently provocative, contrarian, insightful, and intelligent - and therefore naturally a good friend of mine - international criminal law professors around, who is currently running a defense clinic for Guantanamo detainees and acting as a special counsel to the JAG defender office.)

I was particularly interested to see - well, flattered more exactly - to see that a post from this blog was cited in the article, via a discussion in Opinio Juris by Chris Borgen (lovely to see Chris even briefly in person at the ASIL meetings last week!). I have been meaning to write a review essay on the ICRC study and in particular its methodology and form of presentation and what that is likely to mean in the context of ATS litigation in US district courts. I wrote a little bit about it here on this blog a long time ago - here, in 2005. It is interesting to see how blog posts are gradually making their way into legal scholarship.