Jamie Orr has responded to my previous post on the drone memo, in which I argue that the OLC fails to adequately defend its conclusion that the CIA is just as entitled to the public-authority justification (PAJ) as the DoD. It's a thoughtful response, and I appreciate Dean Orr taking the time to write it. But I don't find his arguments convincing. Orr begins by citing Art. 43 of the...
As everyone on Twitter knows by now, the US government has released the notorious memorandum in which the OLC provides the supposed legal justification for killing Anwar al-Awlaki. I'm a bit disappointed not to get a mention in the memo; people in the know have suggested that a post I wrote in April 2010 led the OLC to substantially rewrite it. Vanity aside, though, I'm...
Most of the discussion about Abu Khattallah's capture in Libya has focused on the operation's basis -- or lack thereof -- in domestic US law. Less attention has been paid to whether international law permitted the US to use force on Libyan soil. As Marty Lederman recently noted at Just Security, Abu Khattallah's capture can potentially be justified on two different grounds:...
[caption id="attachment_30807" align="alignnone" width="130"] photo: NYU Law School[/caption] I am sad to mark the passing of one of the giants of international law, and one of my teachers, Professor Andreas Lowenfeld of NYU Law School. His career was exemplary; Andy operated at the highest levels of practice and academia. In an era when so many scholars and practitioners become hyper-focused on...
My co-author John Yoo and I have a piece up on Forbes today arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court missed a grand opportunity in Bond v. U.S. to place constitutional limits on the treaty power. We take aim at Missouri v. Holland head-on. We criticize the interpretation of the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act adopted by the opinion for the Court...
The conflict between China and Vietnam over a Chinese oil rig has (thankfully) calmed down a little bit, with fewer reports of rammings and water cannon fights in the South China Sea. But the war of press release and government-sponsored editorials has heated up and all of them are wielding international law as a weapon of authority and legitimacy. Vietnam's government...
Lawfare reports today on a study published in Political Science Quarterly about how ordinary Pakistanis view US drone strikes in their country. According to the post, the study "[c]hallenge[s] the conventional wisdom" that there is "deep opposition" among Pakistanis to drone strikes and that "the associated anger [i]s a major source of the country's rampant anti-Americanism." I don't have access to the...
Colum Lynch reports today at FP.com that the United States is pushing for the creation of a hybrid international criminal tribunal for Syria by...
There have been lots of reports out in the last 24 hours saying that the Government of Vietnam is planning to take legal action against China for its movement of an oil rig into disputed waters in the South China Sea. Indeed, the Philippines Government has stated that Vietnam has consulted it about its ongoing arbitration case against China and...
There are many reasons to be skeptical of the Security Council referring the situation in Syria to the ICC, not the least of which is that an ICC investigation is unlikely to accomplish anything given the ongoing conflict. (One that Assad is almost certainly going to win.) But just in case that's not enough, take a gander at this provision...