Summary

Description

This volume provides a historical record of developments occurring during calendar year 2011, when the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser marked its 80th birthday since its creation as a statutory entity.1 For the first time, the State Department is publishing the official version of the Digest exclusively on-line. By publishing the Digest on-line, we seek to make U.S. views on international law more quickly and readily accessible to our counterparts in other governments and international organizations, scholars, students, and other users, both within the United States and around the world. The Arab Awakening presented a variety of challenges for the practice of international law in 2011. In addressing events in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and elsewhere, the United States government carefully applied what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called "smart power," utilizing a wide array of foreign policy tools to fit the needs of the particular circumstance. In Libya, the U.S. took a multilateral approach, acting quickly at the UN Security Council to pass historic resolutions that established an arms embargo and sanctions regime and made the first ever unanimous referral to the International Criminal Court. Based on Security Council Resolution 1973's authorization for "all necessary measures" to enforce a no-fly zone, and consistent with the War Powers Resolution, the United States was part of a limited, NATO-led military mission in Libya. Various additional legal issues arose during the U.S. response to the situation in Libya, including those related to securing a protecting power, addressing the situation at the United Nations Human Rights Council, recognizing the new Libyan government, and arranging for funds to be made available to the new government using assets of the former regime that had been frozen pursuant to Security Council resolutions.