A few years ago, John Brennan articulated the US position concerning self-defence against non-state actors: Because we are engaged in an armed conflict with al-Qa’ida, the United States takes the legal position that —in accordance with international law—we have the authority to take action against al-Qa’ida and its associated forces without doing a separate self-defense analysis each time. As the quote makes...
I will be back blogging regularly soon, but I want to call readers' attention to a phenomenal new article at the Intercept by Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain about how the US government has cynically manipulated public fears of terrorism in order to justify its bombing campaign in Syria. Recall that Samantha Power -- the UN Ambassador formerly known as...
There's been much discussion in the blogosphere about the University of Illinois' decision to "un-hire" (read: fire) a Palestinian-American scholar who resigned a tenured position at Virginia Tech to join its faculty, a decision motivated by a series of anti-Zionist (but not anti-Semitic) tweets that made the University's wealthy donors uncomfortable. But the rightful revulsion at Illinois' decision (more than 5,000...
Mike Lewis has a guest post at Just Security today responding to Ryan Goodman's recent post exploring what the US's claimed "unwilling or unable" test for self-defence against non-state actors means in the context of Syria and ISIS. Ryan, careful scholar as always, rightly points out that the test "remains controversial under international law." Mike doesn't seem to have any such...
Matrix Chambers has extended the deadline for applying to September 26 -- two weeks from today. I hope readers with the appropriate credential will consider applying. You can find the original post, with details of the Matrix vacancy, here....
Bobby Chesney has responded at Lawfare to my most recent post on the CIA and the public-authority justification. It's an excellent response from an exceedingly smart scholar. I still disagree, but Bobby's post really hones in on the differences between us. I'll leave it to readers to decide who has the better of the argument. I do, however, want to discuss...
In the first part of my response to Bobby, I argued (after meandering around a bit) that Title 50's "fifth function" provision cannot be used to authorise the CIA to kill Americans overseas -- a necessary condition of any argument that the CIA is entitled to a public-authority justification with regard to 18 USC 1119, the foreign-murder statute. (Bobby kindly responds here.) I...
My friend Bobby Chesney has responded at Lawfare to my previous post arguing that Title 50 does not provide the CIA with a public-authority justification to kill Americans overseas. He disagrees with both of the limits on presidential authority to authorise covert action I discussed. I will address the Article II question in a separate post; in this post I want...
As I noted in my previous post, my co-blogger Deborah Pearlstein has suggested that a covert operation authorised by the President under Title 50 of the US Code could function as the CIA's equivalent to the AUMF in terms of its authority to kill an American citizen overseas. Here is what she has argued: Here, even if the AUMF was not meant to...
In late June, I wrote a long post responding to the notorious memorandum in which the OLC attempted to provide a legal justification for killing Anwar al-Awlaki. I argued that although the AUMF likely provides the US military with a public-authority justification for violating 18 USC 1119, the foreign-murder statute, it does not and cannot provide the CIA with that justification. In defence of that conclusion,...
My friends at Matrix Chambers have asked me to post the following job announcement, for established practitioners in international law: Founded in 2000 to meet the complex challenges of law in the 21st century, Matrix Chambers has 70 members and 7 associate members supported by a dynamic and modern staff team. We have offices in London and Geneva. Individual members of Matrix Chambers...
Today's Jerusalem Post features an article discussing testimony by a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan that purports to demonstrate the IDF takes more care in avoiding civilian casualties than any other army in the world. Here is a snippet: Israel's ratio of civilian to military casualties in Operation Protective Edge was only one-fourth of the average in warfare around the...
