The below assignment gives you the opportunity to demonstrate your critical legal thinking on current controversies in international law. You will have to apply your knowledge gained from different units, including, the nature of international law, its sources, diplomatic relations and human rights. You will have to look at different aspects of international law and analyse various sources of law.

The assessment question is directly concerned with the relation between law, practice and politics. The aim is to sharpen your problem-solving skills referring to relevant sections of the law and with the support of specific case studies.

Assignment

On 14 April 2018, the US, UK and France have carried out air and missile strikes in Syria in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria one week earlier. As a result, three targets were struck – a research facility in Damascus and storage facilities near Homs. There were no reported casualties. There was no clear Security Council authorisation to perform the attack. Some countries condemned this attack saying it was illegal.

Please put forward the justifications for and against the strikes. Your answer should include relevant rules of international law related to the use of force. 

• Your assignment must be a maximum of 3,000 words. You are allowed to go below or above this word count by no more than 10% without your mark being affected.

Sources of law

Before answering the question, you should do research on the topic. You are encouraged to use the following resources:

Reading

Turnitin Originality Check

Before submitting your assignment, it is important to check the originality of your work by submitting your assignment to Turnitin.

By submitting your assignment to this tool you will receive an originality report which can be used to check that you have not included other authors work without correct citation. It is important to note that submitting your work to the Turnitin Originality Check tool does not count as a submission of your final work. You must still submit your assignment below.

Submission Instructions

• Submit your saved document below before the end of Unit 9
• After the deadline, the submission page will be locked
• If you need to apply for Late Submission, please complete the late submission of coursework form
• The assignment word count is 3000 words. If you exceed the word count by more than 10%, then your assignment grade will be reduced by 10% grade points.
  
• Please refer to the OSCOLA Referencing Guidelines from Law Department homepage, it is vital that you correctly reference any parts of your assignment that are not your original work.  
• Your assignment will be run through Turnitin (the plagiarism detection website) upon submission
• You must read and satisfy yourself that you have complied with the Academic Integrity and Plagiarism requirements (see below)
• Blind Marking: We use a system of anonymous marking - please ensure that there is no information on your assignment which could identify you; this includes initials and name in either the document itself or the filename of the document.