The Scope of the Doctrine of Self-Defense

As we are about to dig into the doctrine of self-defense, you may find interesting this excellent blog post that was published this last week, exploring whether states may use force in response to armed attacks launched by non-state actors, in the absence of being able to attribute the attacks to the state from which the non-state actor was operating. We addressed this issue in the exercise we did in class on whether the US invasion of Afghanistan, in response to 9/11, had been lawful.