When it comes to detention and drone strikes, both critics and supporters of the status quo assume that abandoning the armed-conflict model would have not just diplomatic and legal effects but also a significant legal effect.  Critics bank on it, supporters fear it.  But what if their common assumption is wrong?  It's a question I address in a short piece this morning at Security States (a joint online project of Lawfare and The New Republic), titled "

The question before a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Tuesday morning: can a group of detainees held by the United States at Bagram airfield, in Afghanistan, challenge their detentions by petitioning for writs of habeas corpus?   It is presented in three cases, Al Maqaleh, Amanatullah, and Hamidullah, all of which were dismissed by District Court judges in 2012 for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.

An article in the Washington Post today draws attention, once more (see here, for example), to the lingering question of what will become of the lingering population of detainees (all non-Afghans) remaining in US custody in Afghanistan.  Nothing new to report so far as I can tell, alas, other than the rather interesting fact that General Dunford has

Bobby’s post from Friday argued that “the current shadow war approach to counterterrorism doesn’t really require an armed-conflict predicate–or an AUMF, for that matter.”  Bobby’s point is that most if not all of the USG’s current uses of force outside Afghanistan could in theory continue even if the armed conflict against al Qaeda ended.  This is because, as Bobby says, the administration’s “imminent threat” constraint outside hot battlefields – which has allowed quite a lot of lethal force to be used in many nations – “is at