Charles International Law

08/28/2026

Cuban espionage is real.

Ana Belén Montes penetrated the Defense Intelligence Agency. Walter and Gwendolyn Myers spied for Cuba for nearly three decades. Victor Manuel Rocha secretly served Havana while rising through the State Department and serving on the National Security Council.

Those were extraordinarily serious counterintelligence failures.

But the State Department’s new report, “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism,” uses those documented cases to support something very different: sweeping insinuations that American universities, nonprofits, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, anti-ICE organizations, and much of the political left belong to an integrated Cuban influence network.

Drawing on my experience working with national-security and foreign-agent laws at the Department of Justice, I examine the distinctions the report obscures—between espionage and advocacy, foreign direction and ideological sympathy, and clandestine agency and constitutionally protected political speech.

Counterintelligence requires evidence of recruitment, direction, control, tasking, or clandestine activity. Political disagreement and guilt by association are not substitutes for that evidence.

This is not a serious assessment of the contemporary Cuban threat. It is McCarthyism with better graphics.

08/27/2026

American maritime workers perform some of the most dangerous jobs in our economy—but ordinary workers’ compensation laws do not adequately account for the distinctive hazards they face.

Our latest research guide examines the federal protections available to qualifying seamen injured in maritime employment, including:

• Who qualifies as a Jones Act seaman
• Jones Act protection for commercial divers
• Claims involving 1099 contractors and borrowed employees
• Employer negligence and the duty to provide a reasonably safe workplace
• The Jones Act’s favorable causation standard
• Comparative negligence and assumption of risk
• Recoverable damages
• Unseaworthiness claims
• Maintenance and cure
• Filing deadlines and choice of forum
• Evidence that should be preserved after a maritime accident

The Jones Act is not ordinary workers’ compensation, and it is only one part of the larger system of remedies available under federal maritime law. Correctly identifying the worker, employer, vessel, and cause of injury can determine which protections apply.

Read the complete guide:

https://www.charlesinternationallaw.com/jones-act-protection-for-injured-seamen

Learn who qualifies as a Jones Act seaman, how negligence claims work, available damages, maintenance and cure, filing deadlines, and evidence to preserve.

08/27/2026

There are a lot of reasons why, if you can afford an attorney, you probably should not represent yourself in court.

But most of those reasons have less to do with the law being impossibly complicated than lawyers sometimes like to pretend.

Some of them are simply human psychology. It is extraordinarily difficult to advocate objectively when the person whose liberty, livelihood, family, or future is at stake is you. And there is an undeniable difference between standing alone before a court and having a professional advocate standing beside you.

But understanding the law? That should not belong exclusively to lawyers.

If you are intelligent enough to vote for the people who make your laws, you are intelligent enough to understand the basic principles of those laws.

Law is not magic. It was made by human beings who are no smarter than you are. It can be complicated, certainly. But it can also be explained. And in a democratic society, it should be.

That was one of the fundamental philosophies behind Charles International Law.

Now, don’t misunderstand me: I would love to take your money.

I would love for you to hire Charles International Law. I would love to be your lawyer. And I take enormous pride in training younger lawyers who will spend their careers helping clients and, hopefully, making our legal system a little better.

But I also want you to understand the law.

And you don’t have to pay me anything for that.

We have deliberately built the Charles International Law website to be more than an advertisement for a law firm. We want it to be a useful, approachable, publicly accessible legal resource—one that explains difficult subjects in ordinary language and gives people information they can actually use.

Because we think a society in which ordinary people understand their legal system is a better society.

And apparently, the internet is beginning to notice.

Our website is now reaching roughly 10,000 visitors every month.

Are those MrBeast numbers? Absolutely not.

But we’re not MrBeast. We’re a small boutique law firm. For a firm our size, 10,000 people coming to our website every month looking for legal information is enormous.

And, more importantly, people appear to be finding what we publish useful. Search engines increasingly send people our way because they are looking for answers to questions we have tried to answer carefully, accurately, and understandably.

So take a look:

www.CharlesInternationalLaw.com

Read something. Learn something. Send something useful to somebody who needs it.

And please tell us what we’re getting wrong—not just legally, but about the website itself.

What’s confusing? What’s difficult to find? What should we explain that we haven’t explained yet? What would make the site more useful to you?

We want to make it better for our clients.

But we also want to make it better for everyone else.

Because you shouldn’t have to hire a lawyer just to understand the law.

Mission-critical legal advocacy at the nexus of national security and human rights.

08/26/2026

The Jones Act has shaped American maritime commerce for more than a century—but it remains one of the country’s most consequential and misunderstood maritime laws.

Our latest research article examines:

• The history of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920
• America’s longstanding coastwise-trade policy
• The law’s support for domestic shipbuilding and maritime employment
• Its role in national security and military sealift
• The federal ship-mortgage system
• Its protections for qualifying American seamen
• The economic costs and principal criticisms of the law
• The continuing debate over whether its protectionist bargain remains worthwhile

The Jones Act should be neither romanticized nor dismissed as an inexplicable relic. Understanding it requires a serious examination of both the domestic capabilities it preserves and the costs imposed by its restrictions.

Read the complete article:

https://www.charlesinternationallaw.com/the-jones-act

Explore the Jones Act’s history, coastwise shipping rules, protections for seamen, national-security benefits, economic costs, and major criticisms.

08/25/2026

When a parent living overseas says, “I’m taking the children home,” international law may characterize that decision very differently.

Charles International Law has published a new research guide to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. It explains:

• How the Convention developed and was implemented in the United States through ICARA
• When an international removal or retention becomes “wrongful”
• How courts determine a child’s habitual residence
• How to pursue a child’s return from overseas
• How an overseas parent can seek the return of a child brought to the United States
• The principal defenses to return
• The special risks facing American military families stationed abroad

Military orders, American citizenship, command-sponsored travel, and possession of a child’s passport do not necessarily authorize international relocation. Seemingly innocuous conduct can create an expedited Hague return proceeding spanning multiple countries.

Read the complete guide:

https://www.charlesinternationallaw.com/hague-convention-and-international-child-abduction

Mission-critical legal advocacy at the nexus of national security and human rights.

08/22/2026

Charles International Law is getting to the bottom of your bottom time. We are proud to announce the launch of a new personal-injury practice devoted specifically to commercial divers.

Commercial divers perform work that most people never see—but that modern life could not continue without. They inspect bridges and ships, repair underwater infrastructure, maintain offshore energy facilities, and support the submarine cable systems that carry more than 99% of the world’s data traffic.

Yet these essential workers face extraordinary danger. According to federal occupational data analyzed by NIOSH, commercial divers experienced an estimated fatality rate of 158.9 deaths per 100,000 workers from 2011 through 2017—approximately 40 times the rate for the average American worker.

Our practice was created by divers, for professional divers. Our legal team includes a former Naval Special Warfare diving supervisor and a former commercial hard-hat diver. We understand the work, the equipment, the environment, and the questions that must be asked when something goes wrong below the surface.

Commercial divers keep America working and the world connected.

You are important. Your family is important. And when you are injured, you deserve advocates who understand the work and are prepared to fight for you.

Contact Charles International Law to request a consultation.

08/19/2026

08/11/2026

Questions about firm resettlement and asylum? Our new guide explains the bar, DHS’s burden, and key exceptions. Visit: https://www.charlesinternationallaw.com/firm-resettlement-bar-asylum

A detailed guide to the firm-resettlement bar, DHS’s burden of proof, permanent-resettlement offers, regulatory exceptions, foreign-law evidence, and preservation of asylum claims.

08/07/2026

Temporary Protected Status represents America at its best: offering temporary humanitarian protection to people who cannot safely return home because of war, disaster, or extraordinary instability.

But after the Supreme Court’s decision in *Mullin v. Doe*, approximately 350,000 Haitians lost TPS—and federal courts now have far less power to review whether the executive branch lawfully terminated those protections.

The Court did not determine that Haiti is safe. It held that Congress largely entrusted that judgment to the executive branch and insulated it from judicial review.

In this video, I explain what TPS is, why Congress created it, what happened to Haitian TPS, and why this ruling could affect TPS holders from other countries.

Should decisions carrying such profound humanitarian consequences receive meaningful judicial review?

08/06/2026

We’ve published a new Research Library guide explaining the procedural framework for asylum and withholding of removal in the United States.

The page covers affirmative and defensive asylum, Form I-589, the one-year filing deadline, withholding of removal, work authorization, Immigration Court procedure, common filing mistakes, and practical guidance on preparing an application before filing.

Please like, subscribe, and share this resource with anyone who may benefit from a clearer understanding of the U.S. asylum process:

https://www.charlesinternationallaw.com/asylum-and-withholding-of-removal-procedure

A practical guide to affirmative and defensive asylum procedure, Form I-589, filing deadlines, withholding of removal, work authorization, Immigration Court proceedings, and common procedural mistakes.