His name? John Ashcroft. Yep, that John Ashcroft: The consortium in charge of restructuring the world’s most infamous private-security firm just added a new chief in charge of keeping the company on the straight and narrow. Yes, John Ashcroft, the former U.S. attorney general, is now an “independent director” of Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater. Ashcroft will...
Mary Ellen O'Connell has written a more detailed analysis of the international law involved in the bin Laden killing responding to some of the comments on her Opinio Juris post. Here's a taste: The use of lethal force is governed by two types of international law: the law of peace and the law of armed conflict. In peace, international law supports...
Cross-posted at Balkinization In response to my post a few days ago lamenting the post-bin Laden urge to rehash debates about torture’s efficacy, Ben Wittes writes to disagree. “Pearlstein is right, of course, that we will never know with any certainty whether any specific piece of information that the CIA program developed would have been developed had the program used no coercion–or...
[Major John C. Dehn is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Law, US Military Academy, West Point, NY. He currently teaches International Law and Constitutional and Military Law. He is writing in his personal capacity and his views do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Defense, the US Army, or the US Military Academy. The analysis...
A number of students and colleagues have asked me if I believe that Usama bin Laden's killing was legal. I'm swamped with teaching and writing responsibilities, so my ability to blog is limited. But I thought I'd at least put my thoughts on record, skeletal though they may be. And I want to reply to what I think are two...
The United States military sent some of its most highly trained combat experts into Pakistan without asking for Pakistan's permission. They entered Pakistan's airspace in military helicopters specifically equipped to defeat the Pakistani air defenses. According to a national security official in the immediate aftermath of the operation they went there for the sole purpose of killing Osama...
[Mary Ellen O’Connell is the Robert and Marion Short Chair in Law and Research Professor of International Dispute Resolution—Kroc Institute. She is a Vice President at the American Society of International Law and the author of author of The Choice of Law Against Terrorism, 4 J. NAT. SEC. L. & POL’Y 2010] In his speech announcing the death of Osama...
Parag Khanna of the New America Foundation has an essay at CNN.com which gave me cognitive whiplash. He tries to set out an argument that the killing of Bin Laden signifies an important evolution in the rule of law. Khanna, however, seems to like the idea of the rule of law without actually wanting to deal with the details of...
Often used to model legislative politics, positive political theory (PPT) has core insights that can be applied to the journal submissions process as well. There are important differences between the legislative and editorial processes. Like legislative action, however, editors' deliberations and voting on submissions are a process of aggregating preferences within the constraints of voting rules and other institutional features....
And if that's not bad enough, one of Fox's DC anchors announced that "President Obama is, in fact, dead."...
John Bellinger, former State Department Legal Adviser has posted a very short piece entitled Bin Laden Killing: The Legal Basis. Here is an excerpt: The U.S. killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan was lawful under both U.S. domestic law and international law...
Cross-posted at Balkinization For all the interesting things that might be said about the still-emerging circumstances of bin Laden’s death, it’s disheartening to see conversation already turning to old, old debates about interrogation. Peter King (R-N.Y.) was naturally quick to suggest that reports that information leading to bin Laden’s capture came from detainees held at Guantanamo Bay should lead Obama...
