Ashley Deeks is a Professor of Law at the University of Virginia Law School and a senior fellow at UVA's Miller Center. She joined the Virginia faculty in 2012 after two years as an academic fellow at Columbia Law School. She served for ten years in the Legal Adviser's Office at the State Department, most recently as the Assistant Legal Adviser for Political-Military Affairs. In 2007-08 she held an International Affairs Fellowship from the Council on Foreign Relations. After graduating from the University of Chicago Law School, she clerked for Judge Edward Becker on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
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The director of national intelligence has decided to curtail in-person briefings to Congress about election security. Congress should push back.
The U.S. government should start thinking now about how states might apply law tech to international law settings and should consider how foreign governments, especially China’s, might use it in ways that cut against U.S. foreign policy goals.
When a state suffers an internationally wrongful act at the hands of another state, international law allows the injured state to respond in a variety of ways. Depending on the nature, scope, and severity of the initial wrongful act, lawful responses can range from a demand for reparations in response to a low-level violation to a forcible act of self-defense in response to an armed attack. Countermeasures offer an additional way for a state to respond to an internationally wrongful act.
Whether a recent private military excursion violated U.S. law might hinge on the answers to a few important questions.
What are the anti-terrorism statutes on which these purposeful coronavirus exposure prosecutions might be based? And, even if it is feasible to use these statutes to prosecute those deliberately spreading the virus, should prosecutors do so?
On June 20, U.S. military officials confirmed media reports that Iranian military forces successfully shot down a U.S. drone in the vicinity of the Persian Gulf.
As most Lawfare readers know, the United States accused Iran of attacking two oil tankers on June 13 in the Gulf of Oman and crippling the ships with explosions that were presumably caused by naval mines. One tanker was flagged to Japan and the other to Norway.