Before it gets lost in the coverage of this afternoon’s speech by the President, I wanted to flag a very important development in the ongoing saga that is the Bradley Manning court-martial. Folks may recall my post from about a … Read more »
Regular readers may recall my and Wells‘s posts on the public/media access issues that arose out of the 9/11 military commission trial, along with the (in my view, erroneous) resolution of the ACLU and media appeals last month by … Read more »
Habeas lawyer David Remes, who represents Guantanano detainees, writes in with the following comment on the Guantanamo hunger strikes, and Steve’s, my and the Taliban’s response to them:
Several days ago, Steve Vladeck noted the release of a letter by
Via the Center for Constitutional Rights comes news of this alarming development–”that most of the men at Guantánamo have been on hunger strike for more than three weeks,” apparently in response to a series of incidents in which camp … Read more »
In writing my testimony for today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on drones and targeted killing of U.S. citizens overseas, I found myself writing a more complete explication of the essential legal rationale underlying the administration’s position on the subject than … Read more »
No, you didn’t read that wrong. And no, this isn’t an episode of South Park.
The Center for Constitutional Rights and the Canadian Centre for International Justice have filed a complaint with the Geneva-based U.N. Committee Against Torture—which oversees compliance … Read more »
Georgetown law professor David Cole has a new article up on SSRN, “Where Liberty Lies: Civil Society and Individual Rights after 9/11.” It offers something of a retrospective on the role of civil society organizations in defending a vision of … Read more »
Last week I asked whether per se opposition to military commissions was in the GTMO detainees best interests, where their “interests” were defined as “(a) maximizing [the detainees’] procedural rights, and (b) shortening their time in GTMO.” I had in … Read more »
Over at the AEIdeas blog, Marc Thiessen asks derisively: “Why is the ACLU suiting Panetta, Petraus over Awlaki Killing—But Not President Obama?”
He writes:
if it’s accountability they want, then why isn’t President Obama a defendant in the
In Power and Constraint, I argued (in a chapter summarized here) that the Center for Constitutional Rights litigation strategy for GTMO garnered crucial judicial support for GTMO detentions that in the end significantly strengthened the legitimacy of such … Read more »
I have now read through the ACLU-CCR lawsuit on behalf of the Al-Aulaqi and Khan families. Here are my initial thoughts:
First, this lawsuit does not suffer from the prohibitive standing problem that plagued these groups’ earlier efforts to block … Read more »
Pardiss Kebriaei writes in with the following response to my admittedly harsh summary of her D.C. Circuit argument in Al-Zahrani, in which I suggested that she had no good answer to a pretty basic jurisdictional question:
You’ve been sitting
I’m not going to do a full oral argument summary of this morning’s case before the D.C. Circuit, Al Zahrani v. Rodriguez, since it was not a habeas merits case. And the issue it raises, whether the families of … Read more »
The deadline for a notice of appeal of Judge Bates’ ruling in Al Aulaqi came and went a few weeks back with no filing from the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights. In response to my queries, the groups … Read more »
In light of the statements released this past week by the Center for Constitutional Rights and lawyers for Awal Gul–the Guantanamo detainee who died of an apparent heart attack–the following statement, apparently issued by the Taliban, is, well, very … Read more »
In other news from Guantanamo, the military has announced the death of one of the detainees:
MIAMI – Joint Task Force-Guantanamo announced today that a detainee died of apparent natural causes late Tuesday evening. The detainee is identified as Awal
(hat tip: Charlie Dunlap) OFAC has issued a final rule amending the TSR and GTSR sanction regimes to expand the options for designated entities to pay for certain legal services. Presumably this is at least indirectly responsive to issues that … Read more »
Five thoughts on Judge Bates’ Al Aulaqi decision:
First, as far as I’m concerned, there is really only one surprising thing about the decision, whose holdings any Lawfare reader could have anticipated relatively precisely. The surprise is that Judge … Read more »
Judge Bates wrote a solid, careful, and in my view persuasive opinion in al-Aulaqi. The opinion is clearly a victory for the government. But it was not without small victories for ACLU, CCR, and others who want to establish … Read more »
Two weeks ago, I posted a question for Atlantic blogger Jeffrey Goldberg in light of some remarks he made to Nick Baumann of Mother Jones objecting to the targeting of Anwar Al Aulaqi. Goldberg had expressed admiration for the pure … Read more »
Over at Mother Jones, Nick Baumann offers a thoughtful response to my post yesterday, which in turn responded to his earlier post on Al Aulaqi. I don’t mean to respond further, since I think the exchange as it … Read more »
Over at Mother Jones, Nick Baumann accuses me of arguing against straw terrorists. Quoting a Lawfare post from a little while back in which I posited that the alternative to reserving the option of lethal force against Anwar Al Aulaqi … Read more »
Responding to my earlier post objecting to CCR’s statement on the Ghaliani verdict, David Remes–one of the key Guantanamo habeas lawyers–wrote me a very interesting letter. It is interesting, in my view, less for its defense of CCR’s statement … Read more »
In my post earlier today concerning CCR’s terrible statement on the Ghalani verdict, I noted that Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First had seemed to endorse it on Twitter and wondered if HRF really meant to embrace CCR’s claim that … Read more »
The Center for Constitutional Rights has issued what I think is a genuinely shocking statement on the Ghailani verdict–one which really lays bare the group’s position on terrorist trials:
CCR questions the ability of anyone who is Muslim to receive
A fascinating story in the Guardian today concerning objections within the human rights community to the ACLU/CCR lawsuit on behalf of Anwar al-Aulaki. Most notably, the story quotes a member of CCR’s Board of Trustees–Professor Karima Bennoune (Rutgers Law)–as … Read more »
A story on NPR’s All Things Considered tonight (“Al-Qaida, Affiliates Showing Greater Coordination“) conveys a claim by U.S. government officials to the effect that “core/original” al Qaeda (“AQ”) since spring 2010 has increased the degree to which it … Read more »
The Al Aulaqi argument today was long—far too long for me to write a blow-by-blow account of the entire session. It went on for three hours, and I had to duck out just before it ended. Even a brief summary … Read more »
I promised I would offer thoughts on Tom Malinowski’s latest missive after I had a chance to digest and reflect on it. Since then, I have been mostly digesting and reflecting on Justice Breyer’s new book, on which I … Read more »
When last we left the question of targeted killings, Kevin Jon Heller and I were arguing over how to read Tom Malinowski’s statement on behalf of Human Rights Watch on the subject. Considering the question a matter of original understanding, … Read more »
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (“AQAP”) has been much in the news this year thanks to the attempted Christmas Day Bombing last December, the ACLU/CCR lawsuit challenging the government’s alleged plans to use lethal force against U.S. citizen Anwar … Read more »
Kevin Jon Heller makes several challenging points in response to my earlier thoughts on Tom Malinowski’s statement on targeted killings. Before you tune this out as a navel-gazing blogosphere back-and-forth, consider that the point in dispute is actually important. … Read more »
I have been thinking a lot over the last couple of days about Tom Malinowski’s statement in response to my post about the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and drone strikes in Yemen. The more I think about it, the more … Read more »
In reading Mary Ellen O’Connell’s writings on targeted killing in preparation for our debate this weekend, I was struck by how granular her arguments generally are. She writes in great detail about the constituent legal questions that make up the … Read more »
Ok, this exchange is funny–in a macabre, morbid sort of way. It’s also deadly serious. Foreign Policy magazine has published 14 suggestions for President Obama by 14 prominent people concerning how the President can get his mojo back. One of … Read more »
Ben’s most recent post on the al-Aulaki suit has precipitated an interesting discussion at Opinio Juris involving, among others, John Dehn, Kevin Heller, and Mary Ellen O’Connell (Mary Ellen’s thoughts appear in Kevin’s post and in his comment … Read more »
In my initial post on the ACLU/CCR brief in Al Aulaqi, I promised to return to several of the themes I sketched out. In this post, I want to focus on the first: The total absence of press coverage … Read more »
I have a lot to say about the ACLU-CCR brief in Al-Aulaqi, too much for a single post. In addition, this is a busy day for me for non-blogging reasons; my son and I are testing for our black … Read more »
The ACLU and CCR have filed their response to the government’s motion to the dismiss Al Aulaqi case. I haven’t had a chance to read these yet, but thought I would link to them. Here is the groups’ Reply Memorandum … Read more »
Adam Serwer of the American Prospect has a typically thoughtful post on the government’s Al Aulaqi brief, notable for his taking the government’s arguments seriously even in dismissing them. His rather nuanced bottom line is the following:
I think it’s
In my previous post, I argued that the government’s Al Aulaqi privilege claim, for all the attention it is getting, is not the grounds on which the government wants to get this case thrown out. The preferred grounds, to … Read more »
Jack has already posted the government’s brief in opposition to the ACLU’s and CCR’s request for a preliminary injunction and in support of its motion to dismiss. The government, however, filed some other interesting documents along with this lengthy brief. … Read more »
Don’t miss this very interesting story from Charlie Savage on the argument going on within the administration concerning how to respond to the Al Aulaqi lawsuit. The story, which quotes both of my co-bloggers, suggests several possible lines of response … Read more »
Spencer Ackerman complains that my earlier post “doesn’t address the basic and disturbing fact that in Anwar Awlaki’s case, the Obama administration is targeting an American citizen for assassination without due process of law” and he suggest that it “deserves … Read more »
Anthony Romero of the ACLU and Vincent Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights have an oped this morning in the Washington Post on their new lawsuit challenging the reported targeting of Anwar al-Aulaqi. They argue:
In zones of armed … 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 »
