There's been much discussion in the blogosphere about the University of Illinois' decision to "un-hire" (read: fire) a Palestinian-American scholar who resigned a tenured position at Virginia Tech to join its faculty, a decision motivated by a series of anti-Zionist (but not anti-Semitic) tweets that made the University's wealthy donors uncomfortable. But the rightful revulsion at Illinois' decision (more than 5,000...
Mike Lewis has a guest post at Just Security today responding to Ryan Goodman's recent post exploring what the US's claimed "unwilling or unable" test for self-defence against non-state actors means in the context of Syria and ISIS. Ryan, careful scholar as always, rightly points out that the test "remains controversial under international law." Mike doesn't seem to have any such...
Last night I blogged about Obama's speech that outlined the administration's plan to contain and destroy ISIS. I noted that Obama announced his intention to ask for congressional authorization for the plan while steadfastly maintaining that he did not need this authorization. He was vague about why. In my blog last night, I presumed that he was asserting that he...
Bobby Chesney has responded at Lawfare to my most recent post on the CIA and the public-authority justification. It's an excellent response from an exceedingly smart scholar. I still disagree, but Bobby's post really hones in on the differences between us. I'll leave it to readers to decide who has the better of the argument. I do, however, want to discuss...
We have invited several academic luminaries to post here at Opinio Juris beginning early next week about the Scottish independence referendum that will be held next Thursday, September 18th. As we have done in the past with other symposiums, we also welcome other academics to submit guests posts for possible publication. We particularly welcome Scottish, British, EU and state succession...
In the first part of my response to Bobby, I argued (after meandering around a bit) that Title 50's "fifth function" provision cannot be used to authorise the CIA to kill Americans overseas -- a necessary condition of any argument that the CIA is entitled to a public-authority justification with regard to 18 USC 1119, the foreign-murder statute. (Bobby kindly responds here.) I...
My friend Bobby Chesney has responded at Lawfare to my previous post arguing that Title 50 does not provide the CIA with a public-authority justification to kill Americans overseas. He disagrees with both of the limits on presidential authority to authorise covert action I discussed. I will address the Article II question in a separate post; in this post I want...
As I noted in my previous post, my co-blogger Deborah Pearlstein has suggested that a covert operation authorised by the President under Title 50 of the US Code could function as the CIA's equivalent to the AUMF in terms of its authority to kill an American citizen overseas. Here is what she has argued: Here, even if the AUMF was not meant to...
Today's Jerusalem Post features an article discussing testimony by a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan that purports to demonstrate the IDF takes more care in avoiding civilian casualties than any other army in the world. Here is a snippet: Israel's ratio of civilian to military casualties in Operation Protective Edge was only one-fourth of the average in warfare around the...
It's been a while since I've blogged about Chevron’s “Rainforest Chernobyl” — the company's deliberate dumping of more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste-water into Ecuador's Lago Agrio region. But I want to call readers' attention to a blockbuster new article in Rolling Stone that details the wide variety of dirty tricks Chevron has used to avoid paying the multi-billion-dollar judgment...