Search: drones

...to say about the crisis of today and its long term implications for governance. Note to young and aspiring scholars: The national security-terrorism decade is over in international law, transborder law, and domestic constitutionalism, even if there are many dangling issues that haven’t been worked out, such as the scope of covert action, drones, targeted killing, trying terrorists, detention, etc. The 90s were liberal internationalism; the 00s were non-state actor terrorism and state counterterrorism. Like it or not, questions answered or not, events have moved on. It is now the...

Iran has said it may stop oil production if Western sanctions tighten. The United Kingdom will double the number of drones it has in Afghanistan for combat and surveillance missions. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Germany could take part in assisting a European mission to Mali that would train troops to fight Islamist insurgents in the north of the country. Former US President Jimmy Carter has said that the Israel-Palestinian peace process has reached a crisis point and he accused Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu of not pursuing a two-state...

...unconstrained (by lack of personal risk to one’s forces because of drones and lowered civilian harm because of improved targerting) to resort to force. This paper evaluates this claim, and more broadly the idea that jus in bello proportionality and jus ad bellum resort to force can each have a form of “efficiency.” It rejects the claim as incoherent, because the existence of “sides” in conflict results in incommensurable meanings of winning and losing in jus ad bellum, without which there cannot be an “optimal” level of the resort to...

This week on Opinio Juris, Chris Borgen posted about Peter Watts’ short story on the legal and ethical questions relating to the use of autonomous aerial combat drones; Julian Ku shared Cato Institute’s Walter Olson’s observations on the revolving door between the UN and the US legal academy; Kevin Heller gave an account of his PhD viva at Leiden; and Roger Alford made us guess which six countries were the focus of the AP Comparative Government this week. Peter Spiro continued last week’s discussion on US taxation of US expats...

...laws governing the resort to, and use of, armed force. The chapters on the use of force and armed conflict include new reflections on the role of government lawyers and consider new developments in substantive law in an era of drones and “cyberwarfare.” The fourth and final part considers the relationship between domestic law and international law. This is the portion of the book most closely geared to the demands of U.S. law practice. At the same time, it introduces readers to other countries’ views on issues such as jurisdiction,...

...a target was absolutely isolated and no chance of collateral damage.” And speaking of drones, Foreign Policy offers ten ways to fix the drone war. The UK will not invite Argentinian president Cristina Fernandez to the funeral of Margaret Thatcher, but later decided that “good manners” required that at the very least the Argentinian ambassador should be invited. Julian will be happy to see some sign of progress at last: the ICJ will hear Australia’s case against Japan over the latter’s whaling program in late June and early July. At...

...of government are weighing in on how wars should be fought: in the United States, the phrase “human rights-based approach to drones” passes without much comment in the legal academy and mainstream media. As the grandees of the human rights movement enter high office throughout North America and Western Europe, what is the effect of this legal doctrine on warfare–and vice versa?Will this blossoming relationship bring about more humanity in warfare? Or is human rights being conscripted into ever more militarized foreign policy? SOAS has now made the video of...

...the coercive circumstances masquerade as efficiency and better service delivery. Fortifying the Border Autonomous technologies are increasingly used in securing border spaces. FRONTEX, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, has been testing unpiloted military-grade drones in the Mediterranean for the surveillance and interdiction of migrant vessels hoping to reach European shores to file asylum applications. These technologies can have drastic results. While ‘smart-border’ technologies have been called a more ‘humane’ alternative to the Trump Administration’s physical wall, using new surveillance technologies along the US-Mexico border have more than tripled...

Perhaps as a good primer to our upcoming book discussion this week, a few drone-related news items: Despite Pakistan’s requests to the US to stop the program, the third drone strike in Pakistan in as many days has taken its toll on new victims; irrespective of the method of civilian or combatant counting, there are at least 27 dead. The Washington Post points out that drone strikes in Yemen raise legal questions. Canada has come out in support of the US’ use of drones. The UN Committee on Torture has...

...law. Under international law, the main question is whether there is legal authority to kill or assassinate anyone, much less one’s own nationals. But even under international law, as readers of Ken Anderson’s posts here and at Volokh know, it is still not all that clear. Indeed, there seems a more than plausible argument that certain kinds of assassinations, as currently executed by the Predator drones, could indeed constitute a violation of the law of war. In any event, if the U.S. is going to pursue this policy, it should...

...aircraft. But again, given that the machine’s weapons are operated in real time by a human being, the ethical and legal questions are not so many (there are some, but I will skip over them). Here is a US Air Force photo of a Predator: A third layer carries robotics from air drones to the ground. The US military in 2007 deployed for the first time a remote operated ground vehicle with a weapon mounted on top to Iraq for field testing. (It has also been withdrawn again for further...

I want to call readers’ attention to a very useful new essay written by Emory’s Laurie Blank, which is forthcoming in the William Mitchell Law Review. Here is the abstract: Targeted strikes – predominantly using drones – have become the operational counterterrorism tool of choice for the United States over the past few years. Targeted killing can be used both within armed conflict and in the absence of armed conflict, as a means of self-defense, usually as operational counterterrorism. Indeed, this duality lies at the heart of the United States...