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The Gloss Of War: Revisiting The Korean War’S Legacy, Mary L. Dudziak Jan 2023

The Gloss Of War: Revisiting The Korean War’S Legacy, Mary L. Dudziak

Michigan Law Review

In war powers analysis, reliance on the interpretive method of historical practice, also called the “gloss of history,” has made history a technology of the forever war. This approach draws upon the history of U.S. military conflict to interpret the scope of presidential war power and embeds past actions into the separation of powers. There is a crucial flaw in this methodology, however. The understanding of history in historical gloss is not informed by the changing historiography of war. This has led to a divergence between the “history” in legal authority and the revised historical understanding in scholarly works of …


Restoring The Power Of The Convening Authority To Adjust Sentences, Jacob R. Weaver Dec 2020

Restoring The Power Of The Convening Authority To Adjust Sentences, Jacob R. Weaver

Michigan Law Review

In 2013, Congress abrogated the power of certain military officers to reduce court-martial sentences, thereby eliminating a military defendant’s best hope for efficient and effective relief from common legal errors in the military justice system. While the overhaul of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) in 2016 promised significant reform, it ultimately failed to substantially reduce common legal errors. This Note analyzes how the 2013 and 2016 reforms have combined to prevent military defendants from receiving timely and adequate relief. In light of this analysis, this Note suggests an amendment to the UCMJ that would restore to certain officers …


Shots Fired: Digging The Uniformed Services Employment And Reemployment Rights Act Out Of The Trenches Of Arbitration, Lisa Limb Jan 2019

Shots Fired: Digging The Uniformed Services Employment And Reemployment Rights Act Out Of The Trenches Of Arbitration, Lisa Limb

Michigan Law Review

The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) was enacted to protect servicemembers from discrimination by civilian employers and to provide servicemembers with reemployment rights. Recent circuit court decisions, however, have maimed these protections by ruling that mandatory arbitration is permissible under USERRA. This Note argues that such rulings conflict with USERRA’s plain language, statutory structure, and purpose. Ultimately, in light of strong public policy considerations, this Note contends that mandatory arbitration should not be permissible under USERRA and proposes that Congress amend the Act to explicitly prohibit arbitration.


Looking Backward And Forward At The Suspension Clause, G. Edward White Jan 2019

Looking Backward And Forward At The Suspension Clause, G. Edward White

Michigan Law Review

Review of Amanda L. Tyler's Habeas Corpus in Wartime: From the Tower of London to Guantanamo Bay.


The Sweeping Domestic War Powers Of Congress, Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash Jun 2015

The Sweeping Domestic War Powers Of Congress, Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash

Michigan Law Review

With the Habeas Clause standing as a curious exception, the Constitution seems mysteriously mute regarding federal authority during invasions and rebellions. In truth, the Constitution speaks volumes about these domestic wars. The inability to perceive the contours of the domestic wartime Constitution stems, in part, from unfamiliarity with the multifarious emergency legislation enacted during the Revolutionary War. During that war, state and national legislatures authorized the seizure of property, military trial of civilians, and temporary dictatorships. Ratified against the backdrop of these fairly recent wartime measures, the Constitution, via the Necessary and Proper Clause and other provisions, rather clearly augmented …


Racial Templates, Richard Delgado, Juan F. Perea Apr 2014

Racial Templates, Richard Delgado, Juan F. Perea

Michigan Law Review

This riveting tale of greed, international skullduggery, and behind-the-scenes heroism recounts the events that led up to America’s “wicked war” with Mexico. It depicts how expansionist ambitions in high circles fueled jingoistic propaganda (pp. 25, 34–35, 58), fed a public eager for national muscle flexing (pp. 57, 103, 108), and set the stage for a military skirmish in a disputed region between two rivers (pp. 75–77, 95, 100, 138) that provided the pretext for a savage and short-lived military campaign against the weak new nation of Mexico in which the U.S. Army, under General Scott, marched all the way to …


War Is Governance: Explaining The Logic Of The Laws Of War From A Principal-Agent Perspective, Eyal Benvenisti, Amichai Cohen Jan 2014

War Is Governance: Explaining The Logic Of The Laws Of War From A Principal-Agent Perspective, Eyal Benvenisti, Amichai Cohen

Michigan Law Review

What is the purpose of the international law on armed conflict, and why would opponents bent on destroying each other’s capabilities commit to and obey rules designed to limit their choice of targets, weapons, and tactics? Traditionally, answers to this question have been offered on the one hand by moralists who regard the law as being inspired by morality and on the other by realists who explain this branch of law on the basis of reciprocity. Neither side’s answers withstand close scrutiny. In this Article, we develop an alternative explanation that is based on the principal–agent model of domestic governance. …


Beyond The Battlefield, Beyond Al Qaeda: The Destabilizing Legal Architecture Of Counterterrorism, Robert M. Chesney Nov 2013

Beyond The Battlefield, Beyond Al Qaeda: The Destabilizing Legal Architecture Of Counterterrorism, Robert M. Chesney

Michigan Law Review

By the end of the first post-9/11 decade, the legal architecture associated with the U.S. government’s use of military detention and lethal force in the counterterrorism setting had come to seem relatively stable, supported by a remarkable degree of cross-branch and cross-party consensus (manifested by legislation, judicial decisions, and consistency of policy across two very different presidential administrations). That stability is certain to collapse during the second post-9/11 decade, however, thanks to the rapid erosion of two factors that have played a critical role in generating the recent appearance of consensus: the existence of an undisputed armed conflict in Afghanistan, …


A Time For Presidential Power? War Time And The Constrained Executive, David Levine Apr 2013

A Time For Presidential Power? War Time And The Constrained Executive, David Levine

Michigan Law Review

Between 2002 and 2008 I served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force. Though I had been deployed overseas several times, my primary place of duty was in the United States. When I landed at Baghdad International Airport in June 2006, however, several things immediately changed for me as a result of military regulations. I had to carry my sidearm and dog tags at all times. I could not eat anywhere other than a U.S. military installation. I could not drink alcohol. My pay was a bit higher. Personally, I was more vigilant, more aware of my surroundings. …


Cyberattacks And The Covert Action Statute: Toward A Domestic Legal Framework For Offensive Cyberoperations, Aaron P. Brecher Dec 2012

Cyberattacks And The Covert Action Statute: Toward A Domestic Legal Framework For Offensive Cyberoperations, Aaron P. Brecher

Michigan Law Review

Cyberattacks are capable of penetrating and disabling vital national infrastructure, causing catastrophic economic harms, and approximating the effects of war, all from remote locations and without the use of conventional weapons. They can be nearly impossible to attribute definitively to their sources and require relatively few resources to launch. The United States is vulnerable to cyberattacks but also uniquely capable of carrying out cyberattacks of its own. To do so effectively, the United States requires a legal regime that is well suited to cyberattacks' unique attributes and that preserves executive discretion while inducing the executive branch to coordinate with Congress. …


Detention Debates, Deborah N. Pearlstein Jan 2012

Detention Debates, Deborah N. Pearlstein

Michigan Law Review

Since the United States began detaining people in efforts it has characterized, with greater and lesser accuracy, as part of global counterterrorism operations, U.S. detention programs have spawned more than 200 different lawsuits producing 6 Supreme Court decisions, 4 major pieces of legislation, at least 7 executive orders across 2 presidential administrations, more than 100 books, 231 law review articles (counting only those with the word "Guantanamo" in the title), dozens of reports by nongovernmental organizations, and countless news and analysis articles from media outlets in and out of the mainstream. For those in the academic and policy communities who …


Limited War And The Constitution: Iraq And The Crisis Of Presidential Legality, Bruce Ackerman, Oona Hathaway Jan 2011

Limited War And The Constitution: Iraq And The Crisis Of Presidential Legality, Bruce Ackerman, Oona Hathaway

Michigan Law Review

We live in an age of limited war. Yet the legal structure for authorizing and overseeing war has failed to address this modern reality. Nowhere is this failure more clear than in the recent U.S. conflict in Iraq. Congress self-consciously restricted the war's aims to narrow purposes-expressly authorizing a limited war. But the Bush Administration evaded these constitutional limits and transformed a well-defined and limited war into an open-ended conflict operating beyond constitutional boundaries. President Obama has thus far failed to repudiate these acts of presidential unilateralism. If he continues on this course, he will consolidate the precedents set by …


The Price Of Conflict: War, Taxes, And The Politics Of Fiscal Citizenship, Ajay K. Mehrotra Apr 2010

The Price Of Conflict: War, Taxes, And The Politics Of Fiscal Citizenship, Ajay K. Mehrotra

Michigan Law Review

This Review proceeds in four parts, paralleling the chronological organization of War and Taxes. It focuses mainly on the book's analysis of the leading modern American wars, from the Civil War through the global conflicts of the twentieth century, up to the recent war on terror. Part I contrasts the tax policies of the Union and Confederacy during the Civil War to show how the Lincoln Administration was able to overcome Yankee resistance to wartime tax hikes to wage a war against a Southern Confederacy that resolutely resisted any type of centralized taxation until, of course, it was too late. …


Aldous Huxley's Brave New World - Still A Chilling Vision After All These Years, Bob Barr Apr 2010

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World - Still A Chilling Vision After All These Years, Bob Barr

Michigan Law Review

In Part I of this Review, I provide an overview of Brave New World and place it in its proper historical context. In Part II, I explore the parallels between Huxley's World State and post-9/11 America. In Part III, I argue that Brave New World provides prescient warning signs about the dangers of excessive government interference in the economy-warning signs that are of particular importance in the face of the recent economic crisis.


Katrina, Federalism, And Military Law Enforcement: A New Exception To The Posse Comitatus Act, Sean Mcgrane Jan 2010

Katrina, Federalism, And Military Law Enforcement: A New Exception To The Posse Comitatus Act, Sean Mcgrane

Michigan Law Review

In the days following Hurricane Katrina, as lawlessness and violence spread throughout New Orleans, the White House considered invoking the Insurrection Act so that members of the U.S. military could legally perform law enforcement functions inside the flooded city. This Note contends that the White House's decision not to invoke the Act was substantially driven by federalism concerns-in particular, concerns about intruding on Louisiana's sovereignty. But, this Note further contends, in focusing so heavily on these state sovereignty concerns, the White House largely ignored the other side of the 'federalism coin "-namely, enabling the federal government to act where national …


Deconstructing International Criminal Law, Kevin Jon Heller Apr 2008

Deconstructing International Criminal Law, Kevin Jon Heller

Michigan Law Review

After nearly fifty years of post-Nuremberg hibernation, international criminal tribunals have returned to the world stage with a vengeance. The Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ("ICTY") in 1993 and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ("ICTR") in 1994. Hybrid domestic-international tribunals have been established in Sierra Leone (2000), East Timor (2000), Kosovo (2000), Cambodia (2003), Bosnia (2005), and Lebanon (2007). And, of course, the international community's dream of a permanent tribunal was finally realized in 2002, when the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court ("ICC") entered into force. This unprecedented proliferation of international …


War Tales And War Trials, Patricia M. Wald Apr 2008

War Tales And War Trials, Patricia M. Wald

Michigan Law Review

In this foreword, I will compare my experiences as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and the work of war crimes tribunals generally, with a few of the recurrent themes in epic tales of war. Books and trials strive to educate and to persuade their audiences of the barbarity of war and its antipathy to the most fundamental norms of a humane society.3 War crimes tribunals began with Nuremberg and have proliferated in the past fifteen years. These tribunals were established to try and to punish individuals for violations of international humanitarian law ("IHL")-the so-called …


Peace Through Law? The Failure Of A Noble Experiment, Robert J. Delahunty, John C. Yoo Apr 2008

Peace Through Law? The Failure Of A Noble Experiment, Robert J. Delahunty, John C. Yoo

Michigan Law Review

Ever since its publication in 1929, Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front has been regarded as a landmark of antiwar literature. Appearing a decade after the end of the First World War, the novel became a literary sensation almost overnight. Within a year of publication, it had been translated into twenty languages, including Chinese, and by April 1930, sales for twelve of the twenty editions stood at 2.5 million. Remarque was reputed to have the largest readership in the world. Hollywood took note, and an equally successful film appeared in 1930. The success of the novel was …


Judging Sex In War, Karen Engle Apr 2008

Judging Sex In War, Karen Engle

Michigan Law Review

Rape is often said to constitute a fate worse than death. It has long been deployed as an instrument of war and outlawed by international humanitarian law as a serious-sometimes even capital-crime. While disagreement exists over the meaning of rape and the proof that should be required to convict an individual of the crime, today the view that rape is harmful to women enjoys wide concurrence. Advocates for greater legal protection against rape often argue that rape brings shame upon raped women as well as upon their communities. Shame thus adds to rape's power as a war weapon. Sexual violence …


Hacking Into International Humanitarian Law: The Principles Of Distinction And Neutrality In The Age Of Cyber Warfare, Jeffrey T.G. Kelsey Jan 2008

Hacking Into International Humanitarian Law: The Principles Of Distinction And Neutrality In The Age Of Cyber Warfare, Jeffrey T.G. Kelsey

Michigan Law Review

Cyber warfare is an emerging form of warfare not explicitly addressed by existing international law. While most agree that legal restrictions should apply to cyber warfare, the international community has yet to reach consensus on how international humanitarian law ("IHL") applies to this new form of conflict. After providing an overview of the global Internet structure and outlining several cyber warfare scenarios, this Note argues that violations of the traditional principles of distinction and neutrality are more likely to occur in cyber warfare than in conventional warfare. States have strong incentives to engage in prohibited cyber attacks, despite the risk …


Prologue To A Voluntarist War Convention, Robert D. Sloane Dec 2007

Prologue To A Voluntarist War Convention, Robert D. Sloane

Michigan Law Review

This Article attempts to identify and clarify what is genuinely new about the "new paradigm" of armed conflict after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Assuming that sound policy counsels treating certain aspects of the global struggle against modern transnational terrorist networks within the legal rubric of war, this Article stresses that the principal challenge such networks pose is that they require international humanitarian law, somewhat incongruously, to graft conventions-in both the formal and informal senses of that word-onto an unconventional form of organized violence. Furthermore, this process occurs in a context in which one diffuse "party" to the conflict …


International Law And Constitutional Interpretation: The Commander In Chief Clause Reconsidered, Ingrid Brunk Wuerth Oct 2007

International Law And Constitutional Interpretation: The Commander In Chief Clause Reconsidered, Ingrid Brunk Wuerth

Michigan Law Review

The Commander in Chief Clause is a difficult, underexplored area of constitutional interpretation. It is also a context in which international law is often mentioned, but not fully defended, as a possible method of interpreting the Constitution. This Article analyzes why the Commander in Chief Clause is difficult and argues that international law helps resolve some of the problems that the Clause presents. Because of weaknesses in originalist analysis, changes over time, and lack of judicial competence in military matters, the Court and commentators have relied on second-order interpretive norms like congressional authorization and executive branch practice in interpreting the …


Settler's Remorse, Floyd Abrams Apr 2007

Settler's Remorse, Floyd Abrams

Michigan Law Review

Who can quarrel with the notion that settling civil cases is generally a good thing? Litigation is expensive, time-consuming, preoccupying, and often personally destructive. Our courts are overburdened and, in any event, imperfect decision-making entities. It may even be true that, more often than not, "the absolute result of a trial is not as high a quality of justice as is the freely negotiated, give a little, take a little settlement." But not every case should be settled. Many are worthless. The settlement of others could too easily lead to a torrent of unwarranted litigation. Sometimes, as Professor Owen Fiss …


Ieepa's Override Authority: Potential For A Violation Of The Geneva Conventions' Right To Access For Humanitarian Organizations?, Jennifer R. White Aug 2006

Ieepa's Override Authority: Potential For A Violation Of The Geneva Conventions' Right To Access For Humanitarian Organizations?, Jennifer R. White

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that, should the President exercise his override authority to prohibit or restrict the donation of humanitarian articles during an armed conflict involving the United States, the resulting prohibition or restriction would cause the United States to violate its obligations under the Conventions. This Note does not assert that the United States should not have the ability to put in place controls to prevent terrorists from benefiting from donations of funds and other humanitarian items; instead, it asserts that domestic law must tread as lightly and narrowly as possible where a widely accepted multilateral treaty exists and that …


The Limits Of Courage And Principle, Jedediah Purdy Jan 2006

The Limits Of Courage And Principle, Jedediah Purdy

Michigan Law Review

Michael Ignatieff, the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is not a lawyer. His work, however, treats issues of core concern to lawyers: nation-building, human rights, the ethics of warfare, and now, in his latest book, the proper relationship between liberty and security. The Lesser Evil is, in part, a book a legal scholar might have written: a normative framework for lawmaking in the face of the terror threat. It is also something more unusual: an exercise in an older type of jurisprudence. Ignatieff discusses law in the light of moral psychology …


Pluralizing International Criminal Justice, Mark A. Drumbl May 2005

Pluralizing International Criminal Justice, Mark A. Drumbl

Michigan Law Review

From Nuremberg to The Hague scours the institutions of international criminal justice in order to examine their legitimacy and effectiveness. This collection of essays is edited by Philippe Sands, an eminent authority on public international law and professor at University College London. The five essays derive from an equal number of public lectures held in London between April and June 2002. The essays - concise and in places informal - carefully avoid legalese and arcania. Taken together, they cover an impressive spectrum of issues. Read individually, however, each essay is ordered around one or two well-tailored themes, thereby ensuring analytic …


The Inclusive Command: Voluntary Integration Of Sexual Minorities Into The U.S. Military, Jennifer Gerarda Brown, Ian Ayres Oct 2004

The Inclusive Command: Voluntary Integration Of Sexual Minorities Into The U.S. Military, Jennifer Gerarda Brown, Ian Ayres

Michigan Law Review

Many opponents of gays in the military will accept the proposition that gay and lesbian soldiers, most of them closeted, have served their country bravely and well. General Colin Powell has referred to gay service members as "proud, brave, loyal, good Americans" who have "served well in the past and are continuing to serve well." General H. Norman Schwartzkopf agrees: "homosexuals have served in the past and have done a great job serving their country." What these opponents find harder to accept is the proposition that heterosexual people can effectively serve their country if openly gay people are in the …


The Media At The Tip Of The Spear, Kevin A. Smith May 2004

The Media At The Tip Of The Spear, Kevin A. Smith

Michigan Law Review

Due largely to the first widespread availability of the telegraph, through which breaking stories could be transmitted to the presses in moments, the debut of the American war correspondent occurred during the Civil War. From their beginning, American war correspondents have frequently "embedded" with the troops on whom they reported. General Grant, for example, allowed his favorite New York Herald reporter to travel with his entourage, and even used him as a personal messenger. Reporters proved an important component of the war effort for both the North and the South. Papers on both sides proved willing providers of propaganda to …


Checks And Balances In Wartime: American British And Israeli Experiences, Stephen J. Schulhofer Jan 2004

Checks And Balances In Wartime: American British And Israeli Experiences, Stephen J. Schulhofer

Michigan Law Review

Three years after an attack that traumatized the nation and prompted massive military and law-enforcement counter-measures, we continue to wrestle with the central dilemma of the rule of law. Which is more to be feared - the danger of unchecked executive and military power, or the danger of terrorist attacks that only an unconstrained executive could prevent? Posed in varying configurations, the question has already generated extensive litigation since September 11, 2001, and a dozen major appellate rulings. Last Term's Supreme Court trilogy - Rasul v. Bush, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Rumsfeld v. Padilla - clarified several important points …


More Process Than Peace: Legitimacy, Compliance, And The Oslo Accords, Orde F. Kittrie May 2003

More Process Than Peace: Legitimacy, Compliance, And The Oslo Accords, Orde F. Kittrie

Michigan Law Review

The 21st century has inherited a number of bloody and long-unresolved intranational conflicts, including those in Kashmir, Northern Ireland, Burundi, Cyprus, Colombia, the Congo, the Philippines, and the Holy Land. Negotiated efforts to resolve these conflicts through legally binding peace settlements have been attempted from time to time, but without lasting success. Numerous negotiators' memoirs, political science books, and historians' tomes have been devoted to the subject of peace negotiations. But relatively little has been written about peace negotiations from a legal perspective. In particular, the legal literature contains virtually no discussion of what in the contents of a bilateral …