Recent Posts

Is There a ‘Legal Geography of War’?

Faithful readers of this blog - I mean, very faithful readers, the ones who read every post - perhaps know that I have been interested for a long time in a debate that lurks in the background to the debates over targeted killing and drone warfare.  This background debate (one of several important ones embedded in the targeted killing arguments) is whether there is a "legal geography of war."  That's a term I invented for this paper, but it goes to the question of where and when the laws of war apply, and where it is instead just the Laws of Ordinary Life, in the context of targeted killing. I've written a new, short, non-technical, general audience, and no-notes paper that in final form will be published online by the Hoover Task Force on National Security and Law, of which I'm a member.  I have just posted the working version of the paper to SSRN.  Targeted Killing and Drone Warfare: How We Came to Debate Whether There Is a 'Legal Geography of War'. I give my own view in a non-technical way, along with discussion of NIAC and self-defense and other things - but in this essay I'm much more interested in giving my sense of how the debate evolved among various interlocutors over the past ten years. Abstract is below the fold.

Birthers’ Next Line of Retreat: Obama was a Dual Citizen!

Release of Obama's long-form birth certificate won't satisfy the real conspiracists: they are already all over putative discrepancies in the document.  But the document doesn't extinguish another birther argument: Obama wasn't a "natural born citizen" because he had dual citizenship at birth.  Here's an example from among the many birthers who have hit their comment buttons today: Thank you, Mr President...

Am I Arguing a Strawman about Drones, Civilian Collateral Damage, and Discrimination?

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,...

The Sudden Attraction of Drones in Libya

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...

Thoughts on Power and Legitimacy

Lindseth’s book is a highly valuable analysis of the administrative roots of the European Union, which will be of real service to scholars and students in the field.  Although it is impossible to do justice here to his rich and, in many ways, provocative thesis, he argues that the legitimacy of the European project is drawn from administrative law and...

Book Discussion: Peter Lindseth’s Power and Legitimacy: Reconciling Europe and the Nation-State

We're pleased this week to host a discussion of Peter Lindseth’s new book, Power and Legitimacy: Reconciling Europe and the Nation-State (OUP 2010).  Peter is Olimpiad S. Ioffe Professor of International and Comparative Law at the University of Connecticut Law School.  Among other honors, Peter he has been a fellow and visiting professor in the Law and Public Affairs (LAPA)...

Washington Post on Guantanamo Policy

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...