A week ago Charlie Savage reported that the Obama administration “is considering reaffirming the Bush administration’s position that the [Convention Against Torture(CAT)] imposes no legal obligation on the United States to bar cruelty outside its borders.”  The provision of the Torture Convention in question is Article 16, which provides: “Each State Party shall undertake to prevent in any territory under its juri

The newest installment in the Transatlantic Dialogue series (see here) has gone live at EJIL:Talk!. It is from Lawrence Hill-Cawthorne (U.

As Raffaela previously noted, the case of Abdullah v. Obama is an exercise in "heel dragging and losing arguments." A brief refresher on the case: the legal saga started when Guantanamo detainee Hani Saleh Rashid Abdullah filed a habeas petition. The petition went unanswered. Accordingly, Abdullah switched tactics and instead moved for a preliminary injunction against his indefinite detention. This request also went unanswered.

One theme of Ben Emmerson’s interim report on remotely piloted aircraft and targeted killings is that governments must be more transparent with regard to any civilian deaths they cause.  It’s easy to find lots of other calls for greater transparency on related issues.  For instance, many have urged the United States to be more transparent with regard to who the United States believes it can target as a matter of international law, where geographically it believes it may use lethal force, which forces count as “associated forces” for purposes of the Authorization for the Use of Military Force,