In association with the International Commission of Jurists

National Security Law

31 May

In honor of the US government's decision to charge Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men responsible for 9/11 with the non-existent war crime of conspiracy, I want to call readers' attention to an excellent new article by Samuel Morison about the equally non-existent war crime of material support for terrorism.  Morison vivisects the government's attempt to justify material support...

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24 May

[Marty Lederman is an Associate Professor of Law at Georgetown Law. He was was Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel from 2009 to 2010 and an Attorney Advisor in OLC from 1994-2002. This post is cross-posted at Balkinization.] [Slightly updated as noted to reflect valuable reader reactions.] Shortly after the recent military operation against Osama bin...

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19 May

[Harold Hongju Koh is the Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State.] I write in response to those who have raised questions regarding the lawfulness of the recent United States operation against Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. United States officials have recounted the facts of that well-publicized incident, most recently in the interview of President Obama on CBS News 60 Minutes...

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17 May

Can arguments for preemptive self defence under international law be regarded as a mirroring of feminist arguments for justified self-defence in cases of homicide by individuals who have experienced long-term domestic violence? This is one of the questions Dianne Otto raises in response to my MJIL article, ‘Feminist Reflections on the ‘End’ of the War on Terror’. In the article...

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17 May

[Dianne Otto is a Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne, where she directs the programme on International Human Rights Law] Two of the challenging questions that Gina Heathcote asks in her wonderfully provocative article are: What is a ‘feminist’ approach to the regulation of the ‘use of force’ in international law? What light is thrown onto this question by...

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04 May

His name?  John Ashcroft.  Yep, that John Ashcroft: The consortium in charge of restructuring the world’s most infamous private-security firm just added a new chief in charge of keeping the company on the straight and narrow. Yes, John Ashcroft, the former U.S. attorney general, is now an “independent director” of Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater. Ashcroft will...

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