Search: battlefield robots
13 Jun What Comes Next?
...in relatively short order). See, e.g., Slip. Op. at 51, 52-53. This is at the heart of the mess that Roberts and Kennedy stumble into as they talk past one another in their discussion of direct vs. collateral review. Where the pre-habeas process is battlefield interrogation by U.S. soldiers, as the Solicitor General came close to suggesting in Hamdi, habeas courts will be searching and skeptical. Where the pre-habeas process offers a legitimate chance for innocent detainees to prove that innocence to an independent decisionmaker, the procedures and standards applied...08 Jun Should the President (Micro?) Manage Drone Attacks?
...beyond an active battlefield or theater of operations, there are obviously diplomatic considerations that require caution. Should not the “sole organ” of our nation in international affairs (to quote the dicta most often cited by proponents of exclusive executive power in foreign affairs) consider them? In Yoo’s own words: “Poring over the files of kill-list nominees recalls Lyndon Johnson’s role in tightly controlling bombing strikes during the Vietnam War. During Operation Rolling Thunder, Johnson held Tuesday lunches when he and his advisers picked targets to avoid attacks that might provoke...
16 Oct Re-Centering the Human: Supporting Victims of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems
...the drone had been guided by an experimental AI system using a computer chip sold by Nvidia. Further civilian harm from widespread use of lethal autonomous weapons systems (abbreviated, somewhat problematically, to LAWS) in armed conflict is likely. While some argue that LAWS might lead to greater precision on the battlefield, there is strong opposition to the technology, with experts warning of a risk of additional targeting errors, discrimination, murky accountability frameworks and desensitization to the effects of armed conflict. In any event, even lawfully deployed weapons can cause death...03 Mar Art and Auto-Interpretation of Treaties
...should celebrate and which we should disapprove. We might analogize it to debates among various schools of art. Do we consider photorealism (i.e., textualism) to be better than abstract art (i.e., the New Haven School)? Or, is the answer somewhere in between a la impressionism (i.e., the VCLT rule)? Perhaps Prof. Gardiner’s point is simply that treaty interpretation has evolved to the point where the community of interpretators has agreed upon a single, acceptable technique for our art, namely the VCLT. It’s become, to use Jan Klabber’s phrase, our battlefield...02 Mar Interpretation as the Continuation of Politics by Other Means
...would constitute such relevant materials) and, more importantly still perhaps: it would lead to all sorts of difficult negotiations on what exactly the record should reflect. Imagine the sort of record created if the UNCLOS travaux would have been thought to be decisive for future interpretations; the process would in all likelihood have taken twice as long. Still, any lawyer worth her salt will consult whatever record is available. The main function served by the Vienna Convention’s rules, then, is as something of a battlefield: the continuation of politics by...
15 Aug Does the Establishment of Specialized Space Military Corps Ipso Facto Violate International Law?
...of Defense Report further outlined objectives, such as “deploy[ing] next-generation capabilities to support the warfighter”. While the reference to the ‘warfighter’ here does not necessarily allude to the USSF, the Report, in latter halves, blames the congestion and accumulation of rival militarization capabilities in space, specifically that of Russia’s directed-energy weaponry and China’s recent and recurrent anti-satellite (‘ASAT’) testing, for the need to militarize. It constantly refers to space as a ‘battlefield’ and advocates for the military leadership of a new independent armed corps. Additionally, the creation of the USSF...26 Sep In Celebratus: M. Cherif Bassiouni (1937-2017)
...the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the evidence it gathered proved invaluable to the tribunal’s prosecutors as they commenced their investigations. One aspect of the commission’s work that has received relatively lesser attention was its role in shedding light on the use of rape as a weapon of war. The commission conducted interviews with hundreds of female and some male victims of rape, and documented patterns of sexual assault that were undertaken by belligerents to achieve tactical gains on the battlefield, to realize the...
03 May Apartheid-Era Crimes: Indeed “Justice Delayed is Justice Denied”
“The story of Ahmed Timol is rooted in our brutal past. He was not cut down on the battlefield while in the line of fire. He was detained under pernicious security laws and sadistically tortured for more than 4 days. Timol’s tormentors were police officers who were meant to serve and protect, particularly those in their care. While in an utterly incapacitated and defenceless state, and to cover up their crimes, Timol was thrown from the 10th floor of John Vorster Square. Even though he survived the fall the police...14 Jun What do Appropriate Due Diligence Measures for Nonstate and Substate Partners Look Like? Part II: A Sample of US Practice in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan
...questioning at intelligence hubs focused on conflict and battlefield developments – no doubt motivated by their intelligence value – but FSA commanders also said they were frequently questioned about allegations of misconduct or war crimes by their affiliates or other groups. Where FSA groups crossed a “redline” – to include allegations of war crimes or human rights abuses – they were not infrequently cut. The most infamous example was the blocking of the Al-Zenki group from both State Department and CIA support after repeated reports of rights abuses, including the...08 Nov Berkeley Conference: The Internet in Bello: Cyber War Law, Ethics, and Policy
...focused on how cyber warfare might require new rules, or new interpretations of rules, regarding the conduct of hostilities, or the jus in bello, once armed conflict has begun. The Internet in Bello seminar will provide an opportunity for scholars and practitioners to explore issues such as intelligence-gathering and other means of ‘preparing the battlefield’; neutrality before and during cyber war, starting with how to interpret in the Internet era the traditional requirement that neutral States not participating in a given armed conflict not allow the movements of troops or...