Law Commons^™

Justice Jackson's 1946 Nuremberg Reflections At Buffalo: An Introduction, Alfred S. Konefsky, Tara J. Melish

Tara Melish

This Essay introduces the 2011 James McCormick Mitchell Lecture, “From Nuremberg to Buffalo: Justice Jackson’s Enduring Lessons of Morality and Law in a World at War,” a commemoration of Jackson’s 1946 centennial convocation speech at the University of Buffalo. It discusses Jackson’s speech, breaks down its thematic components, and situates the distinguished Mitchell Lecturers’ responses to it in context. Unlike Justice Jackson’s commanding and historic opening and closing statements as U.S. chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, Jackson’s 1946 speech, delivered just days after his return from Germany where he heard the Nuremberg Tribunal deliver its final judgment and verdicts, has largely …

Why A President Cannot Authorize The Military To Violate (Most Of) The Law Of War, John C. Dehn

John C. Dehn

Waterboarding and “much worse,” torture, and “tak[ing] out” the family members of terrorists: President Trump endorsed these measures while campaigning for office. After his inauguration, Trump confirmed his view of the effectiveness of torture and has not clearly rejected other measures forbidden by international law. This Article therefore examines whether a President has the power to order or authorize the military to violate international humanitarian law, known as the “law of war.” Rather than assess whether the law of war generally constrains a President as Commander-in-Chief, however, its focus is the extent to which Congress requires the U.S. military to …

The Conflict Of Laws In Armed Conflicts And Wars, John C. Dehn

John C. Dehn

After over thirteen years of continuous armed conflict, neither courts nor scholars are closer to a common understanding of whether, or how, international and U.S. law interact to regulate acts of belligerency by the United States. This Article articulates the first normative theory regarding the relationship of customary international law to U.S. domestic law that fully harmonizes Supreme Court precedent. It then applies this theory to customary international laws of war to better articulate the legal framework regulating the armed conflicts of the United States. It demonstrates that the relationship of customary international law to U.S. law differs in cases …

Beyond Wealth: Stories Of Art, War, And Greed, Mary Ellen O'Connell

Mary Ellen O'Connell

The article tells three stories of great art and priceless antiquities: one about early Christian mosaics from Cyprus, another about five paintings by the Viennese master, Gustav Klimt, and the third about an ancient statute of a Sumerian king from Iraq. All three stories discuss the international law protecting cultural heritage in time of war and occupation. They all tell of individuals pursuing extraordinary profits from the sale of the objects despite the international law that, properly applied, should have protected them from damage and kept them all in places of public display.The article also tells how in each case …

Is There A New World Court?, Douglass Cassel

Douglass Cassel

No abstract provided.

The Geography Of The Battlefield: A Framework For Detention And Targeting Outside The 'Hot' Conflict Zone, Jennifer Daskal

Jennifer Daskal

The U.S. conflict with al Qaeda raises a number of complicated and contested questions regarding the geographic scope of the battlefield and the related limits on the state’s authority to use lethal force and to detain without charge. To date, the legal and policy discussions on this issue have resulted in a heated and intractable debate. On the one hand, the United States and its supporters argue that the conflict — and broad detention and targeting authorities — extend to wherever the alleged enemy is found, subject to a series of malleable policy constraints. On the other hand, European allies, …

Two Sides Of The Combatant Coin: Untangling Direct Participation In Hostilities From Belligerent Status In Non-International Armed Conflicts, Geoffrey S. Corn, Christopher Jenks

Geoffrey S. Corn

TWO SIDES OF THE COMBATANT COIN: UNTANGLING DIRECT PARTICIPATION IN HOSTILITIES FROM BELLIGERENT STATUS IN NON-INTERNATIONAL ARMED CONFLICTS

GEOFFREY CORN& CHRIS JENKS

ABSTRACT:

Determining who qualifies as a lawful object of attack in contemporary military operations against non-state belligerents is an increasingly demanding challenge. While it is axiomatic that only persons who qualify as either belligerents or civilians taking a direct part in hostilities fall into this category, the nature, and indeed goal, of counter-insurgencies blurs the line between civilians protected from deliberate attack and belligerents subject to attack.

The difficulty in distinguishing the protected (civilians) from the unprotected (belligerents …

Making War, John C. Yoo, Robert Delahunty

John C Yoo

We respond here to Unleashing the Dogs of War by Sai Prakash, which represents the latest originalist argument that war cannot be started by the executive without congressional authorization. First, we argue that Prakash's interpretive approach imposes an unexplained burden of proof that places little to no importance on the starting point for constitutional interpretation: the text. The best reading of the text rejects Prakash's claim about Congress's power to declare war. We supplement our textualist reading by exploring constitutional structure, which should not tolerate the redundancies created by Prakash's approach. The key point here is that the constitutional structure …

Hamdan V. Rumsfeld: The Functional Case For Foreign Affairs Deference To The Executive Branch, John C. Yoo, Julian Ku

John C Yoo

The Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld represents a radical new judicial approach to the interpretation of laws relating to foreign affairs. Not only did the Hamdan Court fail to defer to the executive's reasonable interpretations of the relevant statutes, treaties, and customary international law of war relating to military commissions, but it did not even justify its failure to depart from longstanding formal doctrines requiring such deference. In this Essay, we offer a functional defense of the doctrines requiring judicial deference to executive interpretations of laws affecting foreign affairs in wartime; doctrines that the Hamdan Court largely ignored. …