Military, War, and Peace Commons^™

International Military Tribunals’ Genesis, Wwii Experience, And Future Relevance, Henry Korn

Utah Law Review

Years after the prosecution of Nazi and Japanese war criminals, the United Nations created an International Criminal Tribunal as part of its commitment to bring to justice persons engaged in war crimes, as those crimes were defined during the WWII proceedings. Ultimately, specific tribunals, organized by the United Nations, were created to bring to justice war criminals. In 1993, a tribunal was formed to prosecute former Yugoslav officials and military personnel for atrocities committed during what is known as the Yugoslav wars. In 1994, a tribunal was formed to prosecute officials in Rwanda for evidence of ethnic genocides. There is …

Examining The Role Of Law Of War Training In International Criminal Accountability, Laurie R. Blank

Utah Law Review

Training and dissemination of the fundamental rules and principles of law of armed conflict (LOAC) is the first step in any process to ensure lawful military operations. A soldier, a military unit, an entire military must know the rules and parameters for appropriate, lawful and effective action during armed conflict. In the same manner, accountability for violations of LOAC — whether individual criminal accountability or state responsibility — is an equally essential tool for enforcing the law. Exploring the intersection between these two endpoints of the spectrum of LOAC implementation highlights how training and accountability can actually work together to …

Unfinished Business Of Repealing “Don’T Ask, Don’T Tell”: The Military’S Unconstitutional Ban On Transgender Individuals, Kayla Quam

Utah Law Review

Discrimination based on gender identity is a form of sex discrimination. In Price Waterhouse, the Supreme Court clarified that “sex” encompasses more than biological genitalia. That ruling eviscerated the holding of Holloway, Sommers, and Ulane—the three cases the Tenth Circuit relied on in declaring that sex discrimination did not encompass gender nonconformity. At least since Price Waterhouse, discrimination against someone because of that individual’s failure to conform to sex stereotypes must be considered a form of sex discrimination.156 As transgenderism is defined as nonconformity “to that typically associated with the sex . . . assigned at birth,” discrimination based on …

The Legal And Ethical Limits Of Technological Warfare: Introduction, Amos N. Guiora

Utah Law Review

Deciding a year in advance the theme of a law review symposium is, at best, a tricky proposition. The considerations are varied: what topic will be relevant to academics and policymakers, who shoul dbe invited as panelists, how will invited individuals mix and collaborate with each other, what issue will be of interest to the larger community, and what kind of contribution will the symposium and subsequent publications make to the issue chosen? In conjunction with the Utah Law Review Board and faculty collegues, we decided that addressing the legal and ethical aspects of technological warfare met the criteria we …

Future Technology And Ethics In War, James J. Carafano

Utah Law Review

The influence of technology on war is overrated. Technology does not win wars. It does not lose wars. It does not even fight wars. People do. New technology is the handmaiden of change, but even technologies that take the human "out of the loop" have a hand behind the handmaiden. New technologies pose far fewer new ethical challenges to warfare than is often supposed. The current wave of technological innovation, which is largely derivative of innovations in data processing and transmission, will not change the traditional relationship between technology and ethics in war very much.

The Humanitarian Problem With Drones, Frédéric Mégret

Utah Law Review

One of the difficulties with the debate on drones is that it has become a sort of lightning rod for all kinds of anxieties about the use of force in today’s world. Drones are, often problematically, the emblematic weapon for a range of other phenomena, and unsurprisingly, attract much polemic. The challenge, therefore, is to find the specific problem with drones as a technology in armed conflict that could not be dealt with better by invoking a larger genus of problems. To do this, this Article outlines ways in which drones have been seen as problematic, which this Article argues …

Roundtable Discussion Transcript, Amos N. Guiora

Utah Law Review

Roundtable Moderator:

Amos Guiora, Professor of Law, Co-Director of the Center for Global Justice, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law.

Roundtable Participants:

Harry Soyster, United States Army Lieutenant General (Ret.); former Director, Defense Intelligence Agency;

David Irvine, United States Army Brigadier General (Ret.); former Deputy Commander for the 96th Regional Rediness Command;

Geoffrey S. Corn, Professor of Law; Presidnetial Research Professor, South Texas College of Law;

James Carafano, Vice President, Foreign and Defense Policy Studies; E.W. Richardson Fellow; and Director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, The Heritage Foundation;

Claire Finkelstein, Algernon Biddle …

Legal And Ethical Precepts Governing Emerging Military Technologies: Research And Use, George R. Lucas

Utah Law Review

From the emergence and increasing use of unmanned or remotely piloted vehicles to the advent of cyber war and conflict, the development of new and exotic military technologies has provoked fierce and divisive public debate regarding the ethical challenges posed by such technologies.1 I have increasingly come to believe that the language of morality and ethics has served us poorly in this context and presently serves to further confuse us, rather than to clarify or enlighten us, on how best to cope with the continuing development and deployment of seemingly exotic new military technologies.

Extending Positive Identification From Persons To Places: Terrorism, Armed Conflict, And The Identification Of Military Objectives, Laurie R. Blank

Utah Law Review

In January 2013, French forces combating rebel forces in Mali attacked "Islamic targets" in northern Mali and French fighter planes "hit rebel targets in the northern cities of Gao and Kidal" Turkish forces frequently attack "rebel positions," fighting the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Iraq's Kurdistan region, and the Sri Lankan Army targeted "terroris stronghold[s]" during the conflict with the Tamil Tigers. The Israel Defense Forces contend with "rocket villages" in Hezbollah-dominated areas in southern Lebanon and with the complexities of a periodically intensifying conflict with a terroris entity governing the Gaza Strip. In Afghanistan, U.S. and multinational forces seek …