Earlier today, former State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh gave a talk at the Oxford Union, entitled “How to End the Forever War?” His remarks begin as follows:
Thank you, Mr. President and Members of the Union, for inviting me
In recent weeks, a coalition of NGOs launched a global campaign to ban “killer robots,” or fully autonomous weapon systems (see reporting here). Its statement calls “for urgent action to preemptively ban lethal robot weapons that would be able … Read more »
On the Sunday talk shows, various members of Congress exhorted the United States to increase its assistance to the Syrian rebels, whether by providing them with additional (lethal) equipment, or by establishing a no-fly zone, or by entering Syria to … Read more »
In mid-March, I noted a speech by Home Secretary Theresa May, in which she advanced the idea that the UK should consider withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights. As I noted then, the European Court on Human … Read more »
Now that the United States has acknowledged – with a modest level of confidence – that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the rebels, many press articles are asking whether (or arguing that) the United States should consider … Read more »
Better late than never. I have been meaning to report for some time Secretary Kerry’s announcement earlier this month — via an op-ed in the Huffington Post – that the State Department is now offering a $5 million reward for … Read more »
Whoa. This is very big news—though what it means is far less clear.
The D.C. Circuit has granted the government’s petition for rehearing en banc in the military commission case of U.S. v. Al-Bahlul. It thus appears that a majority … Read more »
This morning’s opinion in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum concludes that the presumption against extraterritoriality applies to claims brought under the Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”), and that nothing in the statute rebuts that presumption. The Court thus affirms the decision … Read more »
Last week a group of major human rights NGOs sent this letter to the President on U.S. targeted killing practices. It calls on the Obama administration to “publicly disclose key targeted killing standards and criteria; ensure that U.S. lethal force … Read more »
What do the Governments of Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka and former Attorneys General William Barr, Ed Meese, and Dick Thornburgh have in common?
Answer: They all believe that the Supreme Court should grant the petition for certiorari of former … Read more »
Ken Anderson and I have just published a new policy paper through the Hoover Institution: Law and Ethics for Autonomous Weapon Systems: Why a Ban Won’t Work and How the Laws of War Can.
Our paper begins:
Public debate
Here is video of the plenary panel from last week’s ASIL conference, entitled “International Law in the Obama Administration: The First Four Years.” Moderated by Donald Donovan, the panel included former State Department officials Harold Hongju Koh and Anne-Marie … Read more »
Jens David Ohlin (Cornell) has an interesting post up at LieberCode in which he discusses a range of LOAC issues raised by CIA involvement in drone strikes. Jens raises the question whether CIA personnel involved in drone strikes can qualify … Read more »
This is old news by now, but Judge Pierre Leval of the Second Circuit has a thoughtful article in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs (behind a paywall, unfortunately) entitled “The Long Arm of International Law: Giving Victims of … Read more »
“Intercross,” the blog page of the International Committee of the Red Cross, is currently running a series of posts with leading ICRC lawyers and guest commentators on the complex and often vexed question of the legal typology of armed … Read more »
James Lewis had an op-ed yesterday in the WP about “Five Myths About Chinese Hackers.” The fifth myth:
5. America spies on China, too, so what can we complain about?
Chinese officials portray their country as a victim of hacking
Mary Dudziak has a truly bizarre oped in the New York Times today taking on the Obama administration’s drone wars on, let’s just say, a new basis: that President Nixon once secretly bombed Cambodia.
I’m not exaggerating. Here’s how it … Read more »
Matt Waxman has just published a new cyber paper that’s well worth reading. The piece picks up on an earlier article of Matt’s that explored when states might treat cyber-attacks as “force” or “armed attacks” under the U.N. Charter.
In … Read more »
In their latest post, Jen and Steve ask me the following question: “Why, exactly, are you so convinced that [ad hoc Congressional authorization for armed conflict is] unrealistic, and that we’d be better off with Congress abandoning the field … Read more »
The following guest post is the latest in a series comprising a debate as to whether LOAC requires an attempt to capture rather than a first-resort to lethal force in some circumstances. The debate involves Professor Ryan Goodman, on one … Read more »
Ben writes that it is the “political reality” that “any president is going to feel obliged to maintain counterterrorism on offense,” i.e., counterterrorism through military means, “and Congress—whining, carping, complaining all the way both that the president is being … Read more »
It’s quickly becoming apparent that we and Jack appear to be talking past each other on the merits of the Chesney/Goldsmith/Waxman/Wittes (CGWW) proposal for a new framework statute for “extra-AUMF threats.” In Jack’s final response, for example, he frames … Read more »
We appreciate Jack’s quick and comprehensive clarification of his views—and of what the CGWW proposal we critiqued last night seeks to achieve. Like Jack, we want to start by emphasizing the many areas of agreement between us and CGWW … Read more »
Over at the D.C. Exile blog, Ben Farley has this thoughtful post on U.N. Special Rapporteur Ben Emmerson’s recent statement on drone strikes in Pakistan. It concludes:
Pakistan’s behavior in general has been at best ambiguous. Despite having the capacity
In the very first days after the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush Administration asked Congress for broad statutory authorization to use military force to “deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United … Read more »
When I testified last month (together with Ben, Bobby, and Steve) before the House Judiciary Committee on the legality of targeted killings, I started and ended my remarks with a plea for more congressional bipartisanship on international and national security … Read more »
This strikes me as a big deal. U.N. Special Rapporteur for Human Rights and Counterterrorism Ben Emmerson has returned from Pakistan and issued a lengthy statement summarizing his discussions with Pakistani officials. The statement contains a lot of material with … Read more »
Don’t look now, but a populous Muslim country in the Indian subcontinent is simmering with tension between its Islamist parties and its ruling civilian government. No, I’m not talking about Pakistan. I’m talking about Bangladesh, which has carried out a
The hits just keep coming today for me — a flood of useful things to post. This one is about a speech that the UK Home Secretary, Theresa May, gave yesterday in which she proposed that the UK consider withdrawing … Read more »
The following guest post is the latest in a series comprising a debate as to whether LOAC requires an attempt to capture rather than a first-resort to lethal force in some circumstances. The debate involves Professor Ryan Goodman, on one … Read more »
I have been curating a running debate about whether LOAC requires an attempt to capture rather than a first-resort to lethal force in some circumstances, sparked by a paper from Professor Ryan Goodman and including responses and more from Professors … Read more »
The New York Times recently carried two reports by Declan Walsh about alleged drone strikes that took place in Pakistan’s tribal areas in February. The first report noted that the strikes may have been conducted not by the United States, … Read more »
In the latest twist in the long-running ATS and TVPA suit against him, former Somali Defense Minister Mohamed Ali Samantar filed on Monday for certiorari after the Fourth Circuit’s surprising decision last October denying him immunity on the basis that … Read more »
Over at the Lawyers, Guns, and Money blog, Robert Farley has an interesting post taking me to task for ignoring the siege of Harfleur in my discussion of Henry V and the law of armed conflict. Farley quotes the lengthy … Read more »
One of the more interesting structural constitutional questions to emerge from the post-9/11 detention litigation has been the previously under-explored relationship between the Constitution’s Suspension and Due Process Clauses–and the extent to which they might do separate work with regard … Read more »
The following guest post is the latest in a series comprising a debate as to whether LOAC requires an attempt to capture rather than a first-resort to lethal force in some circumstances. The debate involves Professor Ryan Goodman, on one … Read more »
Laurie Blank, the director of Emory Law School’s IHL clinic, writes in with the following comments on Henry V and the law of armed conflict:
I just saw your post about Henry V and LOAC. The play is indeed
I went to see a wonderful performance of Henry V this afternoon at the Folger Shakespeare Library—and I came away thinking about the law of armed conflict. I have wondered about early literary invocations of the laws of war before … Read more »
The following guest post is the latest in a series comprising a debate as to whether LOAC requires an attempt to capture rather than a first-resort to lethal force in some circumstances. The debate involves Professor Ryan Goodman, on one … Read more »
The following is a guest post from Ryan Goodman, continuing a conversation begun yesterday in this post from Geoff Corn, Laurie Blank, Chris Jenks, and Eric Jensen.
What the Critics of the “Lesser Evil” Rule (Still) Get Wrong: A Rejoinder … Read more »
Several years ago, in a prescient op-ed in the Washington Post, our colleague John Bellinger argued that the September 2001 AUMF was an increasingly poor fit for the evolving threats facing the United States. It is a theme to which … Read more »
The following is a guest-post from Geoff Corn, Laurie Blank, Christopher Jenks, and Eric Talbot Jensen, responding to Ryan Goodman’s recent Slate article (building on his new European Journal of International Law article, which Jack noted here) in … Read more »
Ryan Goodman follows up his EJIL draft with a briefer and more pointed version of the argument in Slate.
My colleague at Brookings, Daniel Byman, and I have written a lengthy paper on the different tools the United States uses in going after citizens abroad believed to have allied themselves with the enemy. The paper is still a draft, … Read more »
The distraction of the NDAA and the drone controversy led me to miss two other important lawfare developments in December: the Obama Administration asserted immunity for foreign government official defendants in two Alien Tort Statute lawsuits.
Of the two assertions … Read more »
Senator Lindsey Graham threatened yesterday to block confirmation of Chuck Hagel and John Brennan unless President Obama provides more information about his knowledge of the Benghazi attacks.
I have great respect for Senator Graham, a staunch conservative and strong military … Read more »
Ryan Goodman has a timely and important new article, forthcoming in EJIL, entitled The Power to Kill or Capture Enemy Combatants. The Introduction to the piece (footnotes omitted) should draw many readers to the body of the argument:
During
Noah Feldman has a piece entitled Obama’s Drone Attack on Your Due Process, which concludes:
The white paper should have said that due process doesn’t apply on the battlefield. By instead making due process into a rubber stamp, the
Continuing Lawfare’s discussion of the Drone White Paper, we’re pleased to publish the following guest post by Geoffrey Corn on the question of threat identification and the use of force; our thanks to him:
Should We Know How We Know
The most interesting element in Scott Shane’s interesting story on the growing pressure for a Court to vet drone strikes (which quotes Bobby several times) is that the ACLU opposes it. Shane says that Hina Shamsi of the ACLU (these … Read more »
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Leading the news: President Obama speaks today at the National Defense University on counterterrorism policy. Many are previewing the speech, including John. According to the New York Times’s Charlie Savage and Peter Baker, Obama will announce more stringent targeting criteria for non-battlefield strikes. This approach will govern the use of force against both citizens and non-citizens.
Here are the Washington … Read more »
