I was really excited for this cafe series event because I don’t regularly get exposed to introductory law type of information in my course of study- and that’s how I saw this event- a small taste of a law class from a real law professor. Though the event was only an hour, it was dense, it was part lecture and discussion and I gained a lot of law terminology, arguments, logic and cases from it. We talked about the recent accidental bombing of a hospital in Kunduz, and whether or not the event could be considered a war crime. The talk was framed as an essential talk so Cornell students can become informed citizens in the role of criminal law in society.

I really enjoyed how Professor Ohlin gave his discussion- the examples he gave (comic book type, farfetched examples like a giant nuclear bomb) really helped me understand the theoretical concepts of law- How can you understand what is and isn’t proportionate when a comparable event doesn’t exist?

Vital things I learned (and that I should have known earlier):

• International Criminal Court is less than 15 years old, and negotiations for this tribunal began since after World War II (shows how long any kinds of international government action takes)
• the U.S. has not joined the ICC, only a part of the United States Security Council
• presidents have diplomatic immunity- the ICC thinks they trump this law
• decentralized enforcement of the ICC can be seen as a natural form of international governance, or a weak starting point that’ll form into an individual force
• US is limited to its own military airpower (e.g. drone strikes) OR arming/training other country’s military (which has not worked) because they’re avoiding an actual war on ground
• Europe: humanitarian intervention is moral but illegal, which is what going after Assad (Syria) would be, and the opposite of what the US wants to do