As everyone likely knows by now, Rand Paul has ended his remarkable talking filibuster because Attorney General Holder officially responded "no" to the question "Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?" Is it just me, or does Holder's answer actually raise more questions than it answers? (1)...
My previous posts (see here for the most recent) have explained why Judge Kozinski's opinion in the Sea Shepherd case wrongly considers a political end to be a private end. In this post I want to highlight what is ironic -- though not technically incorrect -- about Judge Kozinski's conclusion that Sea Shepherd committed an act of piracy on "the...
Eugene Kontorovich has responded at Volokh Conspiracy to my previous post about politically-motivated acts of violence on the high seas. I invite interested readers to examine for themselves the various documents Eugene and I discuss; in this final post I simply want to correct a fundamental error on Eugene's part concerning the Harvard Draft Convention on Piracy -- an error...
Both Eugene and Maggie disagree with my claim that politically-motivated acts of violence on the high seas were not traditionally considered piracy under international law, but were instead simply criminal acts that the offended state could prosecute as it saw fit. Here is Eugene (my emphasis; combining two comments): The rule is clear as both a matter of customary international law...
As Julian noted earlier, the Ninth Circuit, in an opinion written by Judge Kozinski, has decided that anti-whaling activism qualifies as piracy if it involves violence against a ship on the high seas. I'm running short for time right now, but I want to briefly respond to Kozinski's key claim about the traditional understanding of piracy's "private ends" requirement (p....
The Australian political world is all abuzz at the prospect of Assange running for the Senate in the upcoming federal election, which will be held on September 14. It's not completely clear whom he'll run against, but he will register as a voter in my home state of Victoria and intends to start a new political party, surprisingly entitled the...
Last May, I offered some critical thoughts on Opinio Juris about Charles Taylor's 50-year sentence at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. I have just finished a short essay (8,000 words) on Taylor's sentence that will appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of International Criminal Justice; you can find the essay on SSRN. Here is the introduction: On 30 May...
Noam Lubell and Nathan Derejko, both at the University of Essex, have posted "A Global Battlefield? Drones and the Geographical Scope of Armed Conflict" on SSRN. The essay will appear in the same Journal of International Criminal Justice symposium as my essay on signature strikes. Their abstract is all of one sentence, so here are the first couple of paragraphs: Defining...
According to the White Paper (p. 6), a US citizen "who is located outside the United States and is an operational leader continually planning attacks against US persons or interests" cannot lawfully be killed unless, inter alia, "an informed, high-level official of the US government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of attack against the United States." Early...
There is much to say about the DoJ White Paper on the targeted killing of US citizens, which reflects the US's idiosyncratic interpretation of international law. In this post I want to focus on the White Paper's primary -- and in my view fatal -- flaw: its complete failure to address the relationship between the organized armed groups that it...
Michael Isikoff has obtained the 16-page memo. It is available here. Analysis later! H/T -- Lawfare....
Nothing in the Human Right's Council's report is particularly novel; it's long been obvious that both the settlements and the transfer of Israeli civilians into the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal. Nevertheless, it's worth noting the report's most important conclusions: 100. The facts brought to the attention of the Mission indicate that the State of Israel has had full control of...
