Jens David Ohlin
Biographic Data
| ID | 1317727 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jens David Ohlin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jens David |
| FAMILY NAME | Ohlin |
| SIGNATURE | OHLIN J D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Cornell University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 15 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Lethal Autonomous Weapons
A Roadmap for Fighting Election Interference
If we have learned anything since the 2016 election, it is that foreign election interference is not just a strategic tool used by Russia. Many countries are now using social media disinformation as statecraft to attack democracies. With a relatively small investment of personnel and financial resources, a foreign power can use social media and other online tools to heighten divisions in the electorate, spread disinformation and conspiracy theori…
The Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law
In the past twenty years, international criminal law has become one of the main areas of international legal scholarship and practice. Most textbooks in the field describe the evolution of international criminal tribunals, the elements of the core international crimes, the applicable modes of liability and defences, and the role of states in prosecuting international crimes. This book, however, takes a theoretically informed and refreshingly crit…
Interrogation and Torture
This volume delves into interrogation and torture at a unique moment as two novel and significant developments unfurl: (1) emerging scientific research reveals non-coercive methods to be the most effective interrogation techniques; (2) efforts are made to integrate this science and practice into international law and global policing initiatives. Of initial import, readers will find contributions presenting some of the burgeoning research to offer…
What if Cyberspace Were for Fighting
This essay explores the ethical and legal implications of prioritizing the militarization of cyberspace as part of a roundtable on “Competing Visions for Cyberspace.” Our essay uses an ideal type—a world that accepts warfighting as the prime directive for the construction and use of cyberspace—and examines the ethical and legal consequences that follow for (i) who will have authority to regulate cyberspace; (ii) what vehicles they will most likel…
Weighing Lives in War
This volume combines philosophical analysis with normative legal theory. Although both disciplines have spent the past fifty years investigating the nature of the principles of necessity and proportionality, these discussions were all too often walled off from each other. However, the boundaries of these disciplinary conversations have recently broken down, and this volume continues the cross-disciplinary effort by bringing together philosophers …
The Deaths of Combatants
Although there are few restrictions on killing combatants, the contemporary law of war bans weapons that cause superfluous injury and unnecessary suffering. Because military necessity and humanitarian norms often conflict, no clear regulations have emerged. Instead, states sometimes ban weapons because they cause horrific wounds. But this determination is subjective and has led the Red Cross to seek objective medical guidelines on unnecessary suf…
Necessity in International Law
Necessity is a notoriously dangerous and slippery concept--dangerous because it contemplates virtually unrestrained killing in warfare and slippery when used in conflicting ways in different areas of international law. Jens David Ohlin and Larry May untangle these confusing strands and perform a descriptive mapping of the ways that necessity operates in legal and philosophical arguments in jus ad bellum, jus in bello, human rights, and criminal l…
Combatants and Civilians in Asymmetric Wars
This chapter examines the dividing line between combatants and civilians during contemporary asymmetric conflicts against nonstate actors, the preeminent type of military conflict in this age of global terrorism. Although the dividing line between combatant and civilian is well explored in both the legal and philosophical literatures, this chapter examines the subject explicitly through the lens of necessity. In particular it conentrates on the d…
Precedent and Custom
offered a new explanatory theory of compliance with customary international law. 1 The more typical rational choice story is that states comply with custom in order to prevent their partners from retaliating against them with defections of their own, either in the context of that norm or in some other context, or to avoid negative reputational consequences with third parties. In order to avoid the negative consequences of partner defection, state…
Searching for the Hinterman
How should international courts distinguish between principals and accessories? The ICC answered this question with Roxin’s Control Theory of Perpetration; defendants should be convicted as principals if they control the crime individually, jointly with a co-perpetrator, indirectly via an organized apparatus of power, or as indirect co-perpetrators (via a combination of the previous doctrines). As the ICC adopted the control requirement, however,…
Is Jus in Bello in Crisis
It is a truism that new technologies are remaking the tactical and legal landscape of armed conflict. While such statements are undoubtedly true, it is important to separate genuine trends from scholarly exaggeration. The following essay, an introduction to the Drone Wars symposium of the Journal, catalogues today’s most pressing disputes regarding international humanitarian law (IHL) and their consequences for criminal responsibility. These incl…
Assessing the Control-Theory
As the first cases before the ICC proceed to the Appeals Chamber, the judges ought to critically evaluate the merits and demerits of the control-theory of perpetratorship and its related doctrines. The request for a possible recharacterization of the form of responsibility in the case of Katanga and the recent acquittal of Ngudjolo can be taken as indications that the control-theory is problematic as a theory of liability. The authors, in a spiri…
Nash Equilibrium and International Law
A new wave of realists argues that international law loses its normative force because states that 'follow' international law are merely participants in a Prisoner's Dilemma seeking to achieve self-interested outcomes. Such claims are not just vastly exaggerated; they misunderstand the significance of game theory. Properly conceived, international law is a Nash Equilibrium -a focal point for states as they make rational decisions regarding strate…
Second-Order Linking Principles
Both the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) have struggled to combine vertical and horizontal modes of liability. At the ICTY, the question has primarily arisen within the context of ‘leadership-level’ joint criminal enterprises (JCEs) and how to express their relationship with the relevant physical perpetrators (RPPs) of the crimes. The ICC addressed the issue by combining …
Reclaiming Fundamental Principles of Criminal Law in the Darfur Case
According to the authors, the Report of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Darfur and the Security Council referral of the situation in Darfur to the International Criminal Court (ICC) bring to light two serious deficiencies of the ICC Statute and, more generally, international criminal law: (i) the systematic ambiguity between collective responsibility (i.e. the responsibility of the whole state) and criminal liability of individuals, on which curr…
Applying the Death Penalty to Crimes of Genocide
After the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the United Nations Security Council moved quickly to establish an international tribunal to indict the architects of the slaughter. Whether motivated by a sincere desire for international justice or a self-serving desire to assuage international guilt for the lack of significant military intervention, one thing is clear: the Security Council began a program that, when coupled with its establishment of the Inter…
What if Cyberspace Were for Fighting
This essay explores the ethical and legal implications of prioritizing the militarization of cyberspace as part of a roundtable on “Competing Visions for Cyberspace.” Our essay uses an ideal type—a world that accepts warfighting as the prime directive for the construction and use of cyberspace—and examines the ethical and legal consequences that follow for (i) who will have authority to regulate cyberspace; (ii) what vehicles they will most likel…
Assessing the Control-Theory
As the first cases before the ICC proceed to the Appeals Chamber, the judges ought to critically evaluate the merits and demerits of the control-theory of perpetratorship and its related doctrines. The request for a possible recharacterization of the form of responsibility in the case of Katanga and the recent acquittal of Ngudjolo can be taken as indications that the control-theory is problematic as a theory of liability. The authors, in a spiri…
Nash Equilibrium and International Law
A new wave of realists argues that international law loses its normative force because states that 'follow' international law are merely participants in a Prisoner's Dilemma seeking to achieve self-interested outcomes. Such claims are not just vastly exaggerated; they misunderstand the significance of game theory. Properly conceived, international law is a Nash Equilibrium -a focal point for states as they make rational decisions regarding strate…
Reclaiming Fundamental Principles of Criminal Law in the Darfur Case
According to the authors, the Report of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Darfur and the Security Council referral of the situation in Darfur to the International Criminal Court (ICC) bring to light two serious deficiencies of the ICC Statute and, more generally, international criminal law: (i) the systematic ambiguity between collective responsibility (i.e. the responsibility of the whole state) and criminal liability of individuals, on which curr…
A Roadmap for Fighting Election Interference
If we have learned anything since the 2016 election, it is that foreign election interference is not just a strategic tool used by Russia. Many countries are now using social media disinformation as statecraft to attack democracies. With a relatively small investment of personnel and financial resources, a foreign power can use social media and other online tools to heighten divisions in the electorate, spread disinformation and conspiracy theori…
Second-Order Linking Principles
Both the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) have struggled to combine vertical and horizontal modes of liability. At the ICTY, the question has primarily arisen within the context of ‘leadership-level’ joint criminal enterprises (JCEs) and how to express their relationship with the relevant physical perpetrators (RPPs) of the crimes. The ICC addressed the issue by combining …
Applying the Death Penalty to Crimes of Genocide
After the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the United Nations Security Council moved quickly to establish an international tribunal to indict the architects of the slaughter. Whether motivated by a sincere desire for international justice or a self-serving desire to assuage international guilt for the lack of significant military intervention, one thing is clear: the Security Council began a program that, when coupled with its establishment of the Inter…
Reclaiming Fundamental Principles of Criminal Law in the Darfur Case
According to the authors, the Report of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Darfur and the Security Council referral of the situation in Darfur to the International Criminal Court (ICC) bring to light two serious deficiencies of the ICC Statute and, more generally, international criminal law: (i) the systematic ambiguity between collective responsibility (i.e. the responsibility of the whole state) and criminal liability of individuals, on which curr…
Applying the Death Penalty to Crimes of Genocide
After the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the United Nations Security Council moved quickly to establish an international tribunal to indict the architects of the slaughter. Whether motivated by a sincere desire for international justice or a self-serving desire to assuage international guilt for the lack of significant military intervention, one thing is clear: the Security Council began a program that, when coupled with its establishment of the Inter…
Nash Equilibrium and International Law
A new wave of realists argues that international law loses its normative force because states that 'follow' international law are merely participants in a Prisoner's Dilemma seeking to achieve self-interested outcomes. Such claims are not just vastly exaggerated; they misunderstand the significance of game theory. Properly conceived, international law is a Nash Equilibrium -a focal point for states as they make rational decisions regarding strate…
Second-Order Linking Principles
Both the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) have struggled to combine vertical and horizontal modes of liability. At the ICTY, the question has primarily arisen within the context of ‘leadership-level’ joint criminal enterprises (JCEs) and how to express their relationship with the relevant physical perpetrators (RPPs) of the crimes. The ICC addressed the issue by combining …
Is Jus in Bello in Crisis
It is a truism that new technologies are remaking the tactical and legal landscape of armed conflict. While such statements are undoubtedly true, it is important to separate genuine trends from scholarly exaggeration. The following essay, an introduction to the Drone Wars symposium of the Journal, catalogues today’s most pressing disputes regarding international humanitarian law (IHL) and their consequences for criminal responsibility. These incl…
Assessing the Control-Theory
As the first cases before the ICC proceed to the Appeals Chamber, the judges ought to critically evaluate the merits and demerits of the control-theory of perpetratorship and its related doctrines. The request for a possible recharacterization of the form of responsibility in the case of Katanga and the recent acquittal of Ngudjolo can be taken as indications that the control-theory is problematic as a theory of liability. The authors, in a spiri…
Precedent and Custom
offered a new explanatory theory of compliance with customary international law. 1 The more typical rational choice story is that states comply with custom in order to prevent their partners from retaliating against them with defections of their own, either in the context of that norm or in some other context, or to avoid negative reputational consequences with third parties. In order to avoid the negative consequences of partner defection, state…
Searching for the Hinterman
How should international courts distinguish between principals and accessories? The ICC answered this question with Roxin’s Control Theory of Perpetration; defendants should be convicted as principals if they control the crime individually, jointly with a co-perpetrator, indirectly via an organized apparatus of power, or as indirect co-perpetrators (via a combination of the previous doctrines). As the ICC adopted the control requirement, however,…
Necessity in International Law
Necessity is a notoriously dangerous and slippery concept--dangerous because it contemplates virtually unrestrained killing in warfare and slippery when used in conflicting ways in different areas of international law. Jens David Ohlin and Larry May untangle these confusing strands and perform a descriptive mapping of the ways that necessity operates in legal and philosophical arguments in jus ad bellum, jus in bello, human rights, and criminal l…
Combatants and Civilians in Asymmetric Wars
This chapter examines the dividing line between combatants and civilians during contemporary asymmetric conflicts against nonstate actors, the preeminent type of military conflict in this age of global terrorism. Although the dividing line between combatant and civilian is well explored in both the legal and philosophical literatures, this chapter examines the subject explicitly through the lens of necessity. In particular it conentrates on the d…
Weighing Lives in War
This volume combines philosophical analysis with normative legal theory. Although both disciplines have spent the past fifty years investigating the nature of the principles of necessity and proportionality, these discussions were all too often walled off from each other. However, the boundaries of these disciplinary conversations have recently broken down, and this volume continues the cross-disciplinary effort by bringing together philosophers …
The Deaths of Combatants
Although there are few restrictions on killing combatants, the contemporary law of war bans weapons that cause superfluous injury and unnecessary suffering. Because military necessity and humanitarian norms often conflict, no clear regulations have emerged. Instead, states sometimes ban weapons because they cause horrific wounds. But this determination is subjective and has led the Red Cross to seek objective medical guidelines on unnecessary suf…
What if Cyberspace Were for Fighting
This essay explores the ethical and legal implications of prioritizing the militarization of cyberspace as part of a roundtable on “Competing Visions for Cyberspace.” Our essay uses an ideal type—a world that accepts warfighting as the prime directive for the construction and use of cyberspace—and examines the ethical and legal consequences that follow for (i) who will have authority to regulate cyberspace; (ii) what vehicles they will most likel…
The Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law
In the past twenty years, international criminal law has become one of the main areas of international legal scholarship and practice. Most textbooks in the field describe the evolution of international criminal tribunals, the elements of the core international crimes, the applicable modes of liability and defences, and the role of states in prosecuting international crimes. This book, however, takes a theoretically informed and refreshingly crit…
Interrogation and Torture
This volume delves into interrogation and torture at a unique moment as two novel and significant developments unfurl: (1) emerging scientific research reveals non-coercive methods to be the most effective interrogation techniques; (2) efforts are made to integrate this science and practice into international law and global policing initiatives. Of initial import, readers will find contributions presenting some of the burgeoning research to offer…
Lethal Autonomous Weapons
A Roadmap for Fighting Election Interference
If we have learned anything since the 2016 election, it is that foreign election interference is not just a strategic tool used by Russia. Many countries are now using social media disinformation as statecraft to attack democracies. With a relatively small investment of personnel and financial resources, a foreign power can use social media and other online tools to heighten divisions in the electorate, spread disinformation and conspiracy theori…
Political science (15 works) · Law (10 works) · Global Peace and Security Dynamics (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · International Law and Human Rights (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Law and economics (8 works) · International law (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Criminology (6 works)