A Second Circuit panel has affirmed, in United States v.Kassar (2d Cir. Sep. 21, 2011), the conviction of three defendants who were convicted on charges stemming from a sting operation involving a faux effort by the FARC to obtain weapons for use against U.S.

Matt Dahl is a 2009 graduate of the University of Richmond School of Law who works on legal and policy issues for a cybersecurity company in Virginia.  We are pleased to welcome his guest post, which discusses the potential application to cybercriminal groups of the recent IEEPA-based executive order on Transnational Criminal Organizations:

I've written a lot over the years about the way law responds to changing practical phenomena such as the emergence of non-state actors as a strategic threat, ala al Qaeda, as have many others.  This vein of scholarship often emphasizes themes of globalization and the decline of the Westphalian model in which sovereign states are the only serious players in the international order.  One strand of that scholarship has repeatedly emphasized how similar transnational criminal organizations can be to terrorist groups, even if the nature of the threat they pose is distinguishable and (at least us

Alfredo Corchado of the Dallas Morning-News has an article that will be of interest to anyone trying to come to grips with whether a state of armed conflict can be said to exist in some areas of Mexico.  In particular, the story is of interest with respect to the question of territorial control by a non-state actor, which for some observers is an important consideration in determining whether circumstances of violence in the non-international setting have crossed over the threshold of a