The Wall Street Journal reporting on un-classifed portions of a report anticipated for release next month. I concentrate on robots, not cyber, so I leave it to others to comment, but I do recall that this report and its conclusions have been discussed a fair amount in academic circles, and as far as I know this will not surprise people...
Please don't make any important international news or events with any international law implications, because we're exhausted from the last week or two, and also we have a lot of papers and exams to grade. Memo to World: Don't do anything rash for awhile, while we catch up. (I'm just back from a week guest-posting at Instapundit, and talk about...
At The New Yorker blog, a useful discussion of the legal issues in the OBL attack. As Raffi Khatchadourian writes: What was true in Iraq and in the Second World War also applies in the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Targeted air strikes are status-based operations. The drone strikes are status-based operations. Raids conducted by Special Forces to kill key...
In the comments to my post below, Kevin argues against a certain view attributed to the US government on its non-international armed conflict (NIAC). For what it's worth ...
If I were the Obama administration, I would be looking to put together an ad hoc task force of senior administration lawyers, led by Harold Koh, to defend the following propositions as matters of law. It is: okay to enter a country that is “unable or unwilling,” [temporarily recall Deeks to DOS] okay to treat it as armed conflict under jus ad...
Some have argued that the use of lethal force against specific individuals fails to provide adequate process and thus constitutes unlawful extrajudicial killing. But a state that is engaged in an armed conflict or in legitimate self-defence is not required to provide targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force .... The principles of distinction and proportionality that the US applies are … implemented rigorously throughout the planning and execution of lethal operations to ensure that such operations are conducted in accordance with all applicable law .... Some have argued that our targeting practices violate domestic law, in particular, the longstanding domestic ban on assassinations. But under domestic law, the use of lawful weapons systems — consistent with the applicable laws of war — for precision targeting of specific high-level belligerent leaders when acting in self-defence or during an armed conflict is not unlawful, and hence does not constitute ‘assassination’.
I'm sure most readers are aware that President Obama is about to announce that Osama Bin Laden has been killed, in a mansion outside of Islamabad, Pakistan. I'm just going to leave this as an open thread. I'm not quite sure what the international law aspects of this will turn out to be, as we have no details at this...
I did not want to let the opportunity slip by to offer one comment on Peter Lindseth's fine book - but not from the standpoint of the EU, on which I am not an expert. Instead, I wanted to comment and commend the discussion of legitimacy in the book, both early in an abstract sense and throughout the text in...
In comments to my post below about the strange new respect for drones, Kevin queries whether I’m arguing a strawman. The “circles” that he and I both move in — academics, NGO activists, and so one — he suggests, have never seriously questioned that drones are more discriminating. I don’t suppose that this is one of those arguments that goes anywhere,...
Numbers of folks I’ve been talking with recently — desirous of going forward with humanitarian intervention in Libya, but mindful that international altruism by the Western democracies goes forward only with few casualties among their armies — seem suddenly to have concluded that drones are a wonderfully discriminating weapon. Perhaps I am unfair, and anecdote is not data, but let’s just...
Fine long article in the Washington Post today by Peter Finn and Anne E. Kornblut on why President Obama has not fulfilled his promise to close Guantanamo Bay. Detailed, measured, and comprehensive, with an excellent timeline graphic. I agree with Ben Wittes’ take that the best bit of reporting detail is this: On Obama’s inauguration night, when the new administration instructed military prosecutors...
