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Search: drones

25 Jul

...can arguably be traced back to April 1, 2024, when an airstrike near the Iranian embassy in Damascus killed a high-ranking officer of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In retaliation, Iran launched an unprecedented direct attack on Israeli territory on April 13, deploying a barrage of missiles and drones. This was followed by an Israeli strike on an Iranian missile platform in Isfahan on April 19. The targeted killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, and later the assassination of the Secretary General of Hezbollah Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah...
25.07.25 | and |

01 Nov

...conflict – energy by people like you and me, if you like human rights lawyers or IHL lawyers, could be more effectively deployed in challenging the resort to war in the first place. In other words human rights lawyers should have spent more time challenging the US presence in Afghanistan and Iraq and the resort to drones there and elsewhere, and he’s making that point quite forcefully and he’s obviously had a reaction to it. And there is a second thing he’s doing with this argument, he is saying that...
01.11.21 | |

27 Feb

The European Parliament has just overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning the use of armed drones. I’ll leave it to others to do the hard work of analyzing the resolution, but I couldn’t let this paragraph pass without a mention (emphasis mine): E. whereas drone strikes outside a declared war by a state on the territory of another state without the consent of the latter or of the UN Security Council constitute a violation of international law and of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of that country. The last time a...
27.02.14 | |

04 Nov

...program would destabilize the Pakistani government itself. Some people questioned whether, given the killing of Bin Laden, whether the whole program could be scaled back or even ended. These concerns resulted in a high level review of the two drone programs conducted by the CIA in Pakistan. Notably, the administration remains as firmly and strongly committed to drones and targeted killing as key elements in national counterterrorism policy as it has ever been, if not more so — in Pakistan and elsewhere. Moreover, although greater mechanisms of consultation have been...
04.11.11 | |

06 Jun

In various posts on OJ about Predator drones, targeted killing, and such topics, I’ve made reference to a book chapter I’ve been drafting for Benjamin Wittes’s forthcoming edited volume of policy essays, Legislating the War on Terror: An Agenda for Reform (Brookings Institution Press 2009). I’m pleased to say that my chapter, Targeted Killing in US Counterterrorism Strategy and Law, has been posted up at the Brookings site, as a working paper along with the other working papers that come out in the book. Shameless self promotion; apologies – but...
06.06.09 | |

05 Jul

...Guantanamo has and will continue to result in the need to send detainees to countries with far less humane facilities. Critics from the right, like Jack Goldsmith, suggest that the need to use prisons in Somalia and other countries to detain suspected terrorists means there probably is a policy tradeoff between using drones (Obama’s preferred approach) vs. detentions (Bush). This is likely to eventually evolve into a Romney talking point, even though it will likely be small one and unimportant one. As Jamie Kirchick points out here, the real political...
05.07.12 | |

07 Apr

...his omissions in their law review articles – check on Westlaw. Brian Chang I agree with KJH that the NYU petition is disappointing, especially in light of Harold Koh's record in government, an extensive evaluation of which is available here: http://justsecurity.org/21912/harold-koh-nyu-asil-2010-speech-advancing-human-rights/ On the issue of drones in particular, Harold was not just instrumental in advocating for the drones programme to be compliant with international law as he saw it, but also played a key role in ensuring that the legal basis of the programme was publicly articulated, so that it...
07.04.15 | |

10 Jun

...unable doctrine - that is, why could it not claim that it's not yet a settled part of international law and therefore does not justify drone strikes against its citizens/property in any event? This argument would certainly put the U.S. in a difficult position and one which the Pakistani government could credibly make. Based on this argument, it could arguably even shoot down a U.S. drone as a measure of legal self-defense, as I have written in FP. http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/05/08/can_pakistan_legally_shoot_down_us_drones - would you say Pakistan would be behaving illegally here? To...
10.06.13 | |

09 Apr

Jordan Response... Yet, my draft article addresses some of her claims and demonstrates why some of Mary Ellen's claims are not based in general patterns of practice and patterns of generally shared legal expectation about such practice, and so forth. There are some points of agreement as well, esp. re: who should be flying the drones. Please see http://ssrn.com/abstract=1520717 JJ Paust Howard Gilbert There is no rule about "battlefields". No such rule has ever existed or been imagined in any previous war. When Pettigrew's North Carolinians went looking for shoes...
09.04.10 | |

23 Oct

...Qaeda. Jordan p.s. does any al Qaeda "affiliate" "belong to" a Party to an international armed conflict? Does al Qaeda "belong to" a state? Has al Qaeda ever complied with the rest of Article 4(A)(2) of GPW (e.g., "being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates," "carrying arms openly," "conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war")? Jordan RELATED: new op ed at Jurist re: why Amnesty International's new Report on Drone Targetings used the wrong legal standards, see http://jurist.org/forum/2013/10/jordan-paust-drones-justifications.php enjoy! Jordan sorry, try: http://jurist.org/forum/2013/10/jordan-paust-drones-justification.php...
23.10.13 | |

01 Oct

...won't take 500 words. Drones will not come to the US. So many commentators conceive of drones as this unstoppable fantasy weapon that can "rain death from above". Factually, any nation with an even moderately capable air defense network will not have to worry about drones. They can be detected and once detected easily defeated. They require a constant telemetry link with their controllers, a link that is easily jammed, interrupted or even intercepted. So if you want to imagine killing Jack Goldsmith I'm afraid you will have to do...
01.10.11 | |

06 Nov

...relevant practice and opinio juris on this matter. In any event, there is not "admirable" and "stong" legal argument in the reports with respect to proper tests under human rights law (e.g., "effective control" and "arbitrary" killing) and there is inadequate attention to the law of self-defense. Jordan Regarding proper tests under human rights law and the AI Report, see http://jurist.org/forum/2013/10/jordan-paust-drones-justification.php HRW emphasizes the wrong human rights test as well (in its report on pages 83, 86-87) and pays no attention to the law of self-defense and permissible targeting or...
06.11.13 | |