Law Commons^™

Accountability And Autonomous Weapons: Much Ado About Nothing?, Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

This purpose of this essay is to critique a 2015 report entitled Mind the Gap: The Lack of Accountability for Killer Robots by Human Rights Watch (HRW) produced with the assistance of the Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC). The HRW/IHRC paper attempted to establish that autonomous weapons should be banned because, they claim, “neither criminal law nor civil law guarantees adequate accountability for individuals directly or indirectly involved in the use of fully autonomous systems.” Contrary to HRW/IHRC assertions, this article maintains that although no one can “guarantee” accountability, there are sufficient legal tools to do so …