Professors Glashausser and Martin Publish Pieces in the Huffington Post Regarding Syria

Washburn Law professors Alex Glashausser and Craig Martin recently published pieces in The Huffington Post regarding Syria and international law.

Glashausser's article, "Doing Nothing Is a Right, But Is It Right?" was published Sept. 12.

"President Obama recently said that in the face of hundreds of Syrian children slaughtered by chemical weapons, he could not accept that the United States might 'do nothing.' Yet isolationists and internationalists alike are proposing essentially that. Whether as a reaction to genocide (ignoring Rwanda) or terracide (failing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol), doing nothing may qualify as an American value. Just ask fictional Seinfeld attorney Jackie Chiles. Protesting his callous clients' arrest for violating a 'Good Samaritan' law compelling the rescue of strangers in distress, he tragicomically thundered, 'You don't have to help anybody. That's what this country is all about,'" Glashausser said in the article.

The complete article can be read here: Huffington Post article.

Martin has published two articles in recent weeks. The most recent, published on September 9, was entitled "When Should We Violate International Law in Order to Enforce It?"

"The looming military strikes on Syria are being justified as necessary to enforce and maintain a fundamental international law norm, namely the prohibition on the use of chemical weapons. It is quite clear that in the current situation, and in the absence of U.N. Security Council authorization, such strikes will also themselves violate a fundamental norm of international law, namely the prohibition on the use of force against sovereign states (see here for my own discussion of the legality issues)," he said in the article. 

The entire article can be read here: Huffington Post article.

The previous piece, published August 31, entitled "International Law and the U.S. Military Strikes on Syria" can be read here.