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05 Nov

...the United States. Soft power was a term coined by Joseph Nye to describe non-military dimensions of a state’s international influence: culture, values, law, and ideas. Post 9/11, the idea was expanded and refined under the term “smart power,” which incorporates soft power into decisions about how, why and when to deploy force against state and non-state enemies. There is serious policy content to and strategic thinking behind soft/smart power. But I want to set aside the policy content of an Obama administration (they’ll be plenty of time to focus...
05.11.08 | |

23 Jan

...someone is entitled to POW status. That isn't what the CSRTs are doing. At best, they're supposed to determine whether someone was an enemy combatant. There's no room for a Taliban fighter to say, "Yes I was, but I met the requirements of Article 4, so I should be treated as a POW." That's what the president's determination has foreclosed. Even apart from the legal objections, does anyone argue that this casual reinterpretation of the Geneva Conventions makes sense from a policy point of view? Cassandra AnneJ, clarifying my admitted...
23.01.07 | |

02 May

...or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties." 6 U. S. T., at 3318 (Art. 2, ¶1). High Contracting Parties (signatories) also must abide by all terms of the Conventions vis-À-vis one another even if one party to the conflict is a nonsignatory "Power," and must so abide vis-À-vis the nonsignatory if "the latter accepts and applies" those terms. Ibid. (Art. 2, ¶3). Common Article 3, by contrast, affords some minimal protection, falling short of full protection under the Conventions,...
02.05.07 | |

09 Nov

...the mission nonetheless. Presidents have done as much before (as in President Clinton’s decision to use force in the Balkans), accepting whatever domestic and international law consequences that might follow. Particularly where, as here, the consequences are likely to be modest, this bad option seems less worse than the call-it-lawful alternative. We do some violence to the law in the short term, but avoid the greater violence probably done in the long term by implausible interpretation – a record that now stands as evidence of state practice and opinio juris....
09.11.15 | |

01 Jul

...Nazi invasion of Austria, the Sudetenland, and Czechoslovakia, with the American invasion of Iraq.” What I find particularly interesting, however, is Lozowick’s contention that — as quoted above — “[t]here was no Nazi invasion of the Sudetenland, no invasion of Slovakia, hardly one of Austria and even less of Bohemia.” I don’t know how the history books describe the Nazis’ actions toward Austria and Czechoslovakia; perhaps they avoid the term “invasion” because the invaded countries didn’t resist. I do know, however, that the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (1) held that those...
01.07.10 | |

18 Nov

...of Natural Law is empty of operative force rests upon the view that since the term 'law' must be defined in terms of physical sanctions enforceable within the polity, consequently, the dependence of Natural Law upon theological, transcendental, or non-physical sanctions deprives the concept of the status of 'law.' But even positive law, though backed by coercive authority, relies for its effective and continuing operation upon a large measure of conformity, upon social sanctions, public opinion, and the internalization of externally determined obligations [Brian Tamanaha, if I'm not mistaken, has...
18.11.08 | |

03 Nov

At least the war criminal lost: The basic facts are undisputed: on 15 April 2004 Ilario Pantano, then a second lieutenant with the US marines, stopped and detained two Iraqi men in a car near Falluja. The Iraqis were unarmed and the car found to be empty of weapons. Pantano ordered the two men to search the car for a second time and then, with no other US soldiers in view, unloaded a magazine of his M16A4 automatic rifle into them, before reloading and blasting a second magazine at them...
03.11.10 | |

21 Jun

...relying on such terms pauses to ask what they mean. According to whose standard are these manifestly subjective labels assigned? Meanwhile, Israeli politicians are labeled according to an altogether different standard: They are “doves” or “hawks.” Unlike the terms reserved for Palestinians, there’s nothing inherently negative about either of those avian terms. So why is no Palestinian leader referred to here as a “hawk”? Why are Israeli politicians rarely labeled “extremists”? Or, for that matter, “militants”? There are countless other examples of these linguistic double standards. American media outlets routinely...
21.06.09 | |

06 Feb

of illegal detention, as inconsistent with a life term. Since Duch is 69 years old the difference between life or 45 years would not have made any practical difference. At trial he was sentenced to 35 years reduced to 30 as a remedy for the period of illegal detention. The fixed term of 30 years was then reduced to 19 years taking into account the 11 years he had already served. The many victims in Cambodia did not understand these technical reasons and many were literally weeping outside the courtroom...
06.02.12 | |

20 Jan

...determination of the CSRT to our federal courts. It is simply not correct to say that detainees have not and will not have access to our federal courts to review their detention. Nearly 40 detainees have been released as a result of this process. Detainees who the United States does not intend to prosecute by military commission also have their detention reviewed annually by an Administrative Review Board. This Board determines whether the detainee can be released or transferred without posing a serious threat to the United States or its...
20.01.07 | |

08 Aug

...all but demolished the revisionist accounts on which Nobile depends. Writing in the Pacific Historical Review in November 1998, Sadao Asada offered his own thoroughly researched answer in his seminal article, “The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan‘s Decision to Surrender–A Reconsideration.” His article reveals that the bomb and only the bomb galvanized Japan‘s peace party to take actions necessary to terminate the Pacific War. What he accomplishes in a virtual tour de force is to correlate the day by day decisions of the Japanese government from August 6th...
08.08.06 | |

31 Dec

...for me in terms of distinctions being made between groups of children. Part of this is the child soldier discussions but just want to raise that point as children in peacetime or war that are killed are (moral value implicit that I hope is not seen as too indeterminate to make) a terrible loss to their parents and communities whatever innocence we wish to ascribe to them. Part of this may be due to the intuition we have had that neuroscience is confirming as to the lack of completeness (I...
31.12.12 | |