Search: battlefield robots

[Dr. Thomas D. Grant is a Fellow of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge and a Visiting Fellow of the National Security Institute at George Mason University.] Remedy for the Breach: Seating Ukraine Part One of this blogpost proposed that the anomaly of Russia’s presence as a Security Council Permanent Member be addressed through Rule 17 of the Provisional Rules of Procedure of the Security Council. To recall, Rule 17 provides that “[a]ny representative on the Security Council, to whose credentials objection...

...treatment. And they secure the right to appeal to Article III judges – all the way to the United States Supreme Court. In addition, like our federal civilian courts, reformed commissions allow for the protection of sensitive sources and methods of intelligence gathering, and for the safety and security of participants. A key difference is that, in military commissions, evidentiary rules reflect the realities of the battlefield and of conducting investigations in a war zone. For example, statements may be admissible even in the absence of Miranda warnings, because we...

...are attacked (including with lethal force) should not amount to gratuitous injury or suffering. I contend that the right to use armed force is limited to the objective of rendering individuals hors de combat (taken out of battle) or, in the collective sense, to defeating enemy forces. Parties have a right to kill enemy combatants during hostilities, but that right is constrained when killing is manifestly unnecessary to removing an individual from the battlefield. In some circumstances, it will thus be unlawful to use lethal force when a fighter could...

...of weapons and soldiers through Rwandan territory”, and recruited Rwandan youths, demobilised ex-combatants and Congolese refugees as M23 fighters. It also offers evidence of “direct Rwandan Defence Forces (RDF) interventions into Congolese territory to reinforce M23” and “support to several other armed groups”. “RDF operational units are periodically reinforcing the M23 on the battlefield against the Congolese army,” it said. Many M23 members formerly served in another Rwandan-backed militia, the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), which was responsible along with other militias for widespread atrocities over...

...of whether the second strike was necessary. Law and Justice, But Existing Tropes What is presented to the audience are, on the face of it, brief questions. What is the acceptable use of force and potential collateral damage when war happens at a distance from the battlefield? Both films can be classed not only as war films, but also as law and justice films which ask the audience what they would do as they watch events unfold through a screen in the same way the characters do.  Yet while the...

...the Allies faced after WW II. The unlikelihood of a Ukrainian victory foregrounds the key practical problem a Special Tribunal would face: obtaining suspects and evidence. Nearly all of the suspects and evidence would be in Russia, because unlike other international crimes the crime of aggression focuses on decisions that are taken and plans that are made behind closed doors, not actions on the battlefield. Russia would obviously refuse to cooperate with a Special Tribunal after the conflict ends, and the one avenue that would exist for enforcing its cooperation,...

...e.g. Vietnam and the 1991 Gulf War). All of these models have had issues, but some far far fewer than others. I got curious a few years back so finally did some digging and wrote up this little survey. Here, for example, is 1991 in sum. Between January 22, 1991, when the first prisoner was captured, and May 2, 1991, when the United States transferred the final prisoner from its custody, U.S. detention facilities processed nearly 70,000 detainees, including through the use of battlefield hearings on prisoner status pursuant to...

...the congressional authorization for a military response to September 11 remains good law. But the execution without trial and/or the denial of habeas corpus is much murkier. As it stands now, I don’t believe the President can execute (as oppose to kill on the battlefield) Bin Laden without sending him through the military commission system (which could take a while). Nor does the President control whether or not Bin Laden gets habeas corpus. The Court’s Boumediene decision makes that question tricky, but certainly there is good reason to believe that...

...‘impurists’; and, finally, an emerging category that, I and Michael Ratner (if no one else) discern, of purists-turned impurists-but protesting their purity. I’m told by reputable sources that this last category doesn’t actually exist, but Ratner does not seem to agree (see below). For my own part, I don’t recall those formerly urging try or release following up with me to offer anything like the detailed legal analyses of battlefield detention and the like that I seem to be offered today. But, I’m expressing this as a blogger, and will...

...a non-uniformed soldier using tactics in violation of the customary laws of war against U.S. military personnel. At least in this context, this doesn’t seem like some crazy idea cooked up by the U.S government. One can imagine its practical usage – especially on the battlefield. The individual in question here is alleged to be a Al Qaeda operative in Iraq. But U.S. courts’ skepticism of the enemy combatant concept is probably why the U.S. is transferring him to Iraq. Leaving him in U.S. custody means that he could bring...

...military operations abroad. In most cases, those rights have been developed and interpreted in peaceful democracies. Can they be applied to conflict zones abroad and if so, how? Will national courts have to develop exceptions to accommodate the law of armed conflict and the realities of the battlefield? The interaction of international human rights and the laws of war has caused much controversy and uncertainty, and national courts may be less than eager to subject their constitutions to the same stress test. Each court is also working within the constraints...

...of “lawfare”? The paper offers an analytical framework through which to examine these questions. It begins from the observation that the current system of international humanitarian law (IHL) builds on the principle of the equal application of the law—the uniform and generic treatment of all belligerents on the battlefield according to the same rules and principles, and regardless of any disparity in power.. Yet regulation has taken a different path in some other areas of international law—most notably, international environmental law (IEL) and international trade law (ITL)—by linking obligations with...