General

Judge Antonio Cassese, Ave Atque Vale

Opinio Juris learns with sadness of the passing of Judge Antonio Cassese, one of the pioneers of international criminal justice, following a long battle with cancer.  If you like, leave any remembrances or tributes in the comments.  For my part, I remember Judge Cassese most from the 1980s, at various international humanitarian law meetings, and then particularly around the time...

Gadaffi’s Death May Obscure Truth about Pan Am 103 Bombing

As yesterday's killing of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi is celebrated in Libya and around the world, we should take a moment to ponder what it means for the long quest to discover the truth about the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. I write this from the perspective of a former State Department lawyer who had been assigned to the...

Why the CIA and Drones?

A quick follow-up to Chris' post below - this started as a comment, but got too long, so I'm putting here as a general comment.  The question is one that many of us have asked from the outside, why the CIA in the conduct of drone operations?  And the implied broader questions, is it legal and anyway why is it a good policy idea, even if it is legal, for the CIA to be engaged directly in use of force operations?  The comment that follows is not attempting to defend a position; I'm just repeating in summary form what I've been told over the last few years by people here in Washington when I've asked these questions.  Take them for what they are worth; I'm not an insider to government and have no access to anything secret of any kind.  (Also, I would love to know Bobby Chesney's answers to the same questions, as an side inquiry to his project examining the legal issues in the merger of Title 10 and Title 50 operations - even just an informal comment on this would be useful.)  It goes on for a while, so I'll put it below the fold.

Eyes on Spies

Over the weekend, I read Amy B. Zegart’s new short book, Eyes on Spies, which deals with the persistent failures of Congress to engage in effective intelligence oversight.  (The book is in a Hoover Institution Press series that features short books — brisk and brief, readable in a single plane flight — focused on a single topic.)  I think the book is excellent and here is my review. A short bit:

“Primeval Anarchy” … I Didn’t Write This

Via The Multilateralist, a speech by Shiv Shankar Menon, a former Indian foreign minister and senior security official: "[W]hile domestic societies have evolved or are evolving towards rule of law, international society is still much closer to primeval anarchy...

BU Law School’s “Ten Years In” Conference

Congratulations to Professor Robert Sloane and BU Law School for a fine conference yesterday, “Ten Years In: Appraising the International Law of the ‘Long War’ in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” The conference was co-sponsored by the ASIL Lieber Society and the Naval War College. Update: Peter Margulies contributed a terrific summary of the panel sessions, posted here at Lawfare. The first panel addressed the future of COIN, and it included Professor Andrew Bacevich — not a lawyer, of course, and instead speaking as a well-known strategist, and lending an important interdisciplinary voice.  He offered a blistering critique of COIN (and pretty much every other strategic option as well, including counterterrorism via drones, I should add).  I was part of the second panel, on targeted killing and drones.  Michael Schmitt of the Naval War College offered a vigorous defense of drones as being essentially like any other weapon system, and on this occasion, at least, it was interesting to see how much agreement there was between him and Human Rights First’s Gabor Rona.

China’s Security Council Diplomacy

David Bosco, my American University colleague and author of the always interesting The Multilateralist blog at Foreign Policy, has posted an interview between him and Joel Wuthnow (Princeton’s China and the World Program) on China’s diplomacy at the UN Security Council.  Among many interesting exchanges, this comment on China’s overall role in the world: The mainstream thinking in Beijing is that China should avoid...

A Fair-Minded Non-American Legal Analysis of the Bin Laden Killing

I want to draw readers attention (if they haven't already seen it) to this excellent discussion of the international legality of the Bin Laden killing by Alon Margalit over at EJIL Talk!.  It is particularly instructive for Americans to get a better sense of the non-US views on the Bin Laden killing. It notes that the nearly uniform State support for...

Should the U.S. Offer Condolences for Drone Attacks?

Interesting story out of Charlotte, N.C. about the family of Samir Khan, one of the U.S. citizens killed in the drone attack on Awlaki last week. (h/t Michael Rubin) An official from the U.S. State Department has called the Charlotte family of al-Qaida propagandist Samir Khan to offer the government's condolences on his death in a U.S. drone attack last week...

A Response to Kevin Heller (Part 2)

In a prior post, I responded to some of Kevin Heller’s criticism of the professors' amicus brief recently filed in the Nestle ATS case.  Specifically, that post addressed issues arising from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.  Here I’ll take up Kevin’s criticism based on rulings of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). To frame the...