I am a Lecturer in Law at the University of Exeter, specializing in public international law. My work focuses mainly on the legal status of foreign armed forces under international law and other questions of military and operational law. I have published widely in leading academic journals on status of forces agreements, peace support operations and the legal aspects of European security and defence policy. I am preparing a monograph on the jurisdictional privileges and immunities of foreign armed forces to be published by Cambridge University Press. I maintain close working relationships with legal practitioners in the armed forces and lecture regularly on the subject of international law and military operations in the UK and abroad.
Before taking up an appointment at Exeter Law School in 2008, I studied law and politics at the University of Durham (BA, First Class), the London School of Economics (LLM, Distinction) and University College London (PhD).
I am a member of several academic associations and serve on the ILA Committee on Nuclear Weapons, Non-proliferation & Contemporary International Law, the ILA Study Group on The Conduct of Hostilities under International Humanitarian Law and the Committee of the UK National Group of the International Society for Military Law and the Law of War. I am also a member of the editorial board of The Military Law and the Law of War Review. I was a Visiting Fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law in Cambridge in 2009. I am a Fellow of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. Aurel Sari
This article examines the implications of the Serdar Mohammed case on the law of armed conflict. It argues that the judgment is mistaken as a matter of law and undesirable as a matter of policy, as it drives the convergence between international human rights law and the law of armed conflict too far.
The chapter argues that two distinct concerns relating to the legal position of foreign forces arise in post-conflict situations: the effect that changes in the legal basis of their presence have on their legal status and the need to balance the principle of territorial sovereignty and the jurisdictional exemptions of foreign forces in a manner that reflects the specific features and demands of post-conflict environments. Both of these two concerns point towards the need for a more contextual and dynamic understanding of the legal status of foreign forces deployed in post-conflict situations.
This note argues that the solution adopted by the Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations to the question of attributing wrongful conduct in the cotext of peace support operations is misguided, as it deliberately ignores the legal and institutional status of national contingents, does not reflect consistent international practice and may not serve the best interests of potential claimants.