Law Commons^™

Fear And Projection As Root Causes Of War, And The Archetypal Energies "Trust" And "Peace" As Antidotes, Carroy U. Ferguson

Carroy U "Cuf" Ferguson, Ph.D.

I want to use this opportunity to discuss a phenomenon that continues to plague the human experience. It is called the game of war. War is perhaps the deadliest game that humanity has created. The conflict itself represents what appears to be opposing views about the way things should be. Each side believes that it is right and that its actions are justified. Each side therefore seeks to impose its views on the other or to defend its views against the other. Each side fears the other as an enemy and each side projects its fears onto its perceived “enemy.”

The Case Against National Security Courts, Stephen I. Vladeck

Stephen I. Vladeck

Since September 11, calls for a hybrid national security court to handle special terrorism cases have taken on a new-found prominence, as courts and policymakers alike have struggled with the complex series of legal and logistical problems posed by the U.S. government's detention of enemy combatants, especially the hundreds of non-citizens so detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. National security courts are, for many, an increasingly attractive compromise solution to the seemingly irreconcilable division between those who believe that terrorism suspects are not entitled to the traditional criminal process and those who believe not only that they are, but that any …

Parallel Lines Never Meet: Why The Military Disability Retirement And Veterans Affairs Department Claim Adjudication Systems Are A Failure, Thomas Reed

Thomas J Reed

Service members who are injured or come down with a disease while on active duty have two roads to seek compensation for disability benefits that are part of the enlistment contract. The first road is military disability retirement, administered by the armed services. The second road is VA compensation administered by the cabinet-level Department of Veterans Affairs. Both systems are near collapse due to a backlog of undecided claims and manifest injustices in awarding benefits to disabled veterans and dependents.

Professor Reed proposes a radical reform of the dual compensation system by combining military disability retirement and VA benefits into …

Inside Guantanamo, Peter J. Honigsberg

Peter J Honigsberg

In May 2007 I visited Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. What I saw and experienced then are fading away and will soon disappear, now that two-thirds of the nearly 800 detainees have been released and President Obama will close the detention centers within the year. Consequently, this essay provides a historical account of one person's media visit to Guantanamo, when it was a fully-operational prison violating human rights, due process and international law.

The essay describes not only the visit but also the application process -- a bizarre experience. The military's application concluded with two quotes from the New Testament and included …

The 21st Century Space Arms Race: Curtailing Heavenly Thunderbolts Through The Shield Of The ‘Peaceful Purposes’ Mantra, Jackson N. Maogoto, Steven Freeland

Jackson Nyamuya Maogoto

Because of its uniquely commanding height, outer space has gained even greater military and strategic value in the post-Cold War international strategic environment. This provides for the possibility – some say probability - that outer space will become a platform for warfare. This development can only have negative consequences in the long term. As the United States pursues a policy that incorporates the placing of weapons in outer space, the other major space faring powers have not been idly sitting by. Recent advances in space technologies have put the development of space weapons within the realm of possibility for several …

Saateks, Rain Liivoja

Rain Liivoja

This is an introductory essay to accompany the Estonian translation of Jean Henri Dunant's Un Souvenir de Solférino. The text explains the history of the book and its impact on the subsequent development of the law of armed conflict.