The Wall Street Journal's Siobhan Gorman has an interesting profile today of Michael Morell, a veteran CIA insider (31 years in) who is tapped to help guide the new director, David Petraeus, as he steps out of the uniform and into the suit, through the maze of internal CIA culture. (It might be behind the subscriber wall.) In a rare interview,...
The legality of NATO's action in Libya seems to me fairly straightforward. I understand that there are some quibbles about whether NATO exceeded its mandate under the UN Security Council Resolutions. But I don't think there is a very strong case, as a question of jus ad bellum. Then again, the hard left (in the form of Dennis Kucinich) and,...
"People of Libya! In response to your own will, fulfilling your most heartfelt wishes, answering your incessant demands for change and regeneration and your longing to strive towards these ends, listening to your incitement to rebel, your armed forces have undertaken the overthrow of the reactionary and corrupt regime, the stench of which has sickened and horrified us all...
Last week I posted about the challenges to and importance of judicial review of war measures against U.S. citizens. This post will use the bin Laden killing to explore the issue in the context of targeting --- hopefully in manner accessible to the average reader. After reviewing issues likely preventing prior judicial adjudication or review of a potentially lethal (“kill...
Expect to hear more of this in the next few days from the anti-Obama progressive left. NATO commanders who authorized the Libya bombing campaign should be “held accountable” to international law and hauled before the world court for civilian deaths, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) said Tuesday. “NATO’s top commanders may have acted under color of international law, but they are not exempt...
Let's assume that the Libyan rebels do prevail and that they end up capturing Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Does the new Libyan government have a legal obligation to turn him over to the ICC, even if they seek to try him in Libyan courts? Libya is not a member of the ICC Rome Statute, so its only obligation flows from the...
Reacting to the still-imminent fall of the Gaddafi regime in Libya, U.S. presidential candidate (and likely future president if you believe these polls) Mitt Romney has called for the extradition of the mastermind of Lockerbie bombing, Abdelbaset Mohmed Ali al-Megrahi, to the United States. The demand raises an interesting dilemma. Megrahi was tried and convicted in a special Scottish tribunal set...
Time has an interesting article up about Saif's reappearance in Tripoli. The whole thing is well worth a read, but I was struck by these paragraphs about the ICC: The rebels were not the only ones whose credibility was in doubt on Tuesday. So too was that of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, which has indicted...
Professor Sam Estreicher of NYU has an interesting and provocative new take on the "so-called proportionality principle" in the law of armed conflict that was recently published by the Chicago Journal of International Law. The focus of this article is on the so-called principle of “proportionality,” which regulates the conduct of warfare in an effort to limit harm to civilians during...
So says Saif Gaddafi, who apparently has not been captured by the rebels after all: Muammar Gaddafi's once powerful son, Saif al-Islam, made a defiant appearance in Tripoli last night to disprove the revolutionaries' claim to have arrested him and to proclaim ultimate victory. Saif al-Islam, 39, arrived in an armoured vehicle waving two fingers in a victory sign...
While the world waits to learn the fate of embattled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, the trial of another former Mid East Leader, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, is currently underway. In terms of international interest, Mubarak may be no Gaddafi. But since the Mubarak trial concerns the former President of a strategicly important country charged with ordering the killing of unarmed protesters challenging his rule, it has...
DARPA will be making a grant award this fall to some organization to address interstellar space flight: In what is perhaps the ultimate startup opportunity, Darpa, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, plans to award some lucky, ambitious and star-struck organization roughly $500,000 in seed money to begin studying what it would take — organizationally, technically, sociologically and ethically — to send...
