I've got a new draft article on cyberthreats (you can download it at SSRN here). I'd planned to wait before blogging about it, but events have overtaken my plans since Orin Kerr and Dave Hoffman are already discussing my ideas over at Concurring Opinions. So, let me offer some responses to their questions here, and in the process explain (a) why some...
I have no idea why Ken posted his thoughts on the Washington Post editorial only at Volokh Conspiracy, but I wanted to respond to his post, because I think it is based on a critical misapprehension of the laws of war. Here are the relevant paragraphs (my emphasis): [G]oing to the geographic definition of war as a legal concept. This idea...
Ben Wittes calls attention today to a Washington Post editorial defending the targeted killing of American citizens like Al-Aulaqi: [W]hen a target is hiding in a lawless state or in one which refuses to cooperate in his apprehension, other alternatives must be considered, including targeted strikes. The decision to target an American must be a last resort, used...
Via BLDGBLOG and Pruned (1, 2), here are two suggestions that are not so much literal proposals but rather thought experiments, each meant to prod the viewer. (And a third one from me.) The first is one of the winners of SeaChange 2030+, an "ideas competition" sponsored by the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects with the goal of addressing the effects of...
Julian noted a couple of days ago that the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights have challenged the Obama administration's "asserted authority to carry out ‘targeted killings’ of U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism far from any field of armed conflict.” The lawsuit claims, inter alia, that such killings violate the due-process rights of the targeted citizens. As Anthony Romero...
Matt Armstrong, who blogs at MountainRunner, has an article in the current World Politics Review called Reforming Smith-Mundt: Making American Public Diplomacy Safe for Americans. While the full version is only available online for a fee, there is a brief excerpt on the WPR website: American public diplomacy has been the subject of many reports and much discussion over the past few...
Last spring I spoke at a Pepperdine torts conference addressing the globalization of tort law. Lots of famous torts scholars in the room, including my former classmate at NYU, Harvard Professor Jonathan Goldberg. I was the only international law guy in the crowd, which actually worked to my advantage given the topic. I chose for my topic...
The Washington Post is reporting that a State Department contractor has been charged with leaking defense information to Fox News: A State Department contractor was indicted Friday by a federal grand jury in the District, becoming the latest target of a series of investigations into unauthorized government leaks to news organizations under the Obama administration. Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, 43,...
Brad Roth has sent along a link to this New York Times editorial, which begins: If a country sinks beneath the sea, is it still a country? That is a question about which the Republic of the Marshall Islands — a Micronesian nation of 29 low-lying coral atolls — is now seeking expert legal advice. It is also a question the...
Julian's latest snide swipe at the ICC focuses on Bashir's visit to Kenya, which he describes as a "slap in the face to the ICC Prosecutor and the defenders of the Bashir arrest warrant." Not surprisingly, Julian conveniently fails to mention the details of Bashir's visit: Sudanese President Omar al Bashir curiously flew in through Nairobi’s Wilson Airport, and ...
So says a draft UN report that studied events in the Congo between 1993 and 2008: An exhaustive U.N. investigation into the history of violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo has concluded that the Rwandan military and its allies carried out hundreds of large-scale killings of ethnic Hutu refugees during the 1990s that amounted to war crimes,...
It's not often that you run into a story that combines international arbitration, Kremlin politics, post-Soviet autocrats, utopian urban projects, transnational networks, electoral politics, and chess. So, read on...
