Military, War, and Peace Commons^™

Beyond Guantanamo: Restoring The Rule Of Law To The Law Of War, Claire Oakes Finkelstein, Harvey Rishikof

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In June 2021, CERL assembled a working group to address the difficult legal and policy questions that arise in anticipation of renewed attempts to close the Guantánamo detention facility. The CERL 2021 Working Group on Guantánamo Bay is co-chaired by Claire Finkelstein, a professor of criminal and national security law at the University of Pennsylvania and CERL’s faculty director, and Harvey Rishikof, former convening authority for the commissions and a visiting professor of national security law at Temple University. The group comprises over thirty national security and counterterrorism experts, retired military officers, lawyers, former Department of Justice officials, psychologists, psychiatrists, …

On Environmental, Climate Change & National Security Law, Mark P. Nevitt

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This Article offers a new way to think about climate change. Two new climate change assessments — the 2018 Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA) and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel’s Special Report on Climate Change — prominently highlight climate change’s multifaceted national security risks. Indeed, not only is climate change a “super wicked” environmental problem, it also accelerates existing national security threats, acting as both a “threat accelerant” and “catalyst for conflict.” Further, climate change increases the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events while threatening nations’ territorial integrity and sovereignty through rising sea levels. It causes both internal displacement …

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law (114:4 Am J Int'l L), Jean Galbraith

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This article is reproduced with permission from the October 2020 issue of the American Journal of International Law © 2020 American Society of International Law. All rights reserved.

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law (114:3 Am J Int'l L), Jean Galbraith

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This article is reproduced with permission from the July 2020 issue of the American Journal of International Law © 2020 American Society of International Law. All rights reserved.

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law (114:2 Am J Int'l L), Jean Galbraith

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This article is reproduced with permission from the April 2020 issue of the American Journal of International Law © 2020 American Society of International Law. All rights reserved.

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law (114:1 Am J Int'l L), Jean Galbraith

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This article is reproduced with permission from the January 2020 issue of the American Journal of International Law © 2020 American Society of International Law. All rights reserved.

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law (113:2 Am J Int'l L), Jean Galbraith

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This article is reproduced with permission from the April 2019 issue of the American Journal of International Law © 2019 American Society of International Law. All rights reserved.

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law (113:3 Am J Int'l L), Jean Galbraith

All Faculty Scholarship

This article is reproduced with permission from the July 2019 issue of the American Journal of International Law © 2019 American Society of International Law. All rights reserved.

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law (113:4 Am J Int'l L), Jean Galbraith

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This article is reproduced with permission from the October 2019 issue of the American Journal of International Law © 2019 American Society of International Law. All rights reserved.

The Operational And Administrative Militaries, Mark P. Nevitt

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This Article offers a new way of thinking about the military. The U.S. military’s existing legal architecture arose from tragedy: in response to operational military failures in Vietnam, the 1980 failed Iranian hostage rescue attempt and other military misadventures, Congress revamped the Department of Defense (DoD)’s organization. The resulting law, the Goldwater-Nichols Act, formed two militaries within the DoD that endure to this day. These two militaries – the operational military and the administrative military – were once opaque to the outside observer but have emerged from the shadows in light of recent conflicts. The operational military remains the focus …

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law (113:1 Am J Int'l L), Jean Galbraith

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This article is reproduced with permission from the January 2019 issue of the American Journal of International Law © 2019 American Society of International Law. All rights reserved.

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law (112:4 Am J Int'l L), Jean Galbraith

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This article is reproduced with permission from the October 2018 issue of the American Journal of International Law © 2018 American Society of International Law. All rights reserved.

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law (112:3 Am J Int'l L), Jean Galbraith

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This article is reproduced with permission from the July 2018 issue of the American Journal of International Law © 2018 American Society of International Law. All rights reserved.

Military Justice: A Very Short Introduction (Book Review), Mark Patrick Nevitt

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This short essay reviews Professor Eugene Fidell’s recently published book, “Military Justice A Very Short Introduction” (Oxford Press). This book is a welcome addition to military law and military justice literature more generally. Eugene Fidell, a professor at Yale Law School, brings a tremendous breadth of experience as both a scholar and military justice practitioner. He also possesses a keen observational and critical eye to the subject of military justice practiced here and abroad.

The book review first provides an overview of Professor Fidell’s book, its organizational set-up, and where it sits in the broader context of military justice literature. …

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law (112:2 Am J Int'l L), Jean Galbraith

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This article is reproduced with permission from the April 2018 issue of the American Journal of International Law © 2018 American Society of International Law. All rights reserved.

Once the PDF is open, individual articles are accessible either by scrolling down or by clicking on the bookmark symbol.

Polar Opposites: Assessing The State Of Environmental Law In The World’S Polar Regions, Mark Nevitt, Robert V. Percival

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Climate change is fundamentally transforming both the Arctic and Antarctic polar regions. Yet they differ dramatically in their governing legal regimes. For the past sixty years the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), a traditional “hard law” international law treaty system, effectively de-militarized the Antarctic region and halted competing sovereignty claims. In contrast, the Arctic region lacks a unifying Arctic treaty and is governed by the newer “soft law” global environmental law model embodied in the Arctic Council’s collaborative work. Now climate change is challenging this model. It is transforming the geography of both polar regions, breaking away massive ice sheets in …

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law (112:1 Am J Int'l L), Jean Galbraith

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This article is reproduced with permission from the January 2018 issue of the American Journal of International Law © 2018 American Society of International Law. All rights reserved.

Once the PDF is open, individual articles are accessible either by scrolling down or by clicking on the bookmark symbol.

Defense And Desert: When Reasons Don’T Share, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan

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Many retributivists maintain that when a defendant commits an offense, (1) the defendant forfeits rights against punishment and (2) it is intrinsically good for the defendant to get the punishment he deserves. Self-defense theorists often maintain that when certain conditions are met, (1) an aggressor forfeits his rights against defensive force and (2) the aggressor may be harmed instrumentally to prevent his attack. In the context of a symposium on Uwe Steinhoff’s "Just War Theory," this paper examines the intersection of defense and desert. First, may desert and defense be aggregated when, for instance, the amount of harm that is …

Reforming The Pentagon: Reflections On How Everything Became War And The Military Became Everything, Mark P. Nevitt

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What best explains how “Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything?”— the provocative title of a recent book by Professor Rosa Brooks of Georgetown Law. In this Essay, I turn to the Department of Defense’s (DoD) unique agency design as the vehicle to address this question. Specifically, I first describe and analyze the role that the 1947 National Security Act and 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act play in incentivizing organizational behavior within the DoD. These two Acts have broad implications for national security governance. Relatedly, I address the consequences of these two core national security laws, focusing on the …

Brief For Justice Richard J. Goldstone As Amicus Curiae In Support Of Petitioner, Sarah Paoletti

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Amicus curiae herein argue the present petition for a writ of certiorari should be granted as it rightly questions the very legitimacy of the military commission used to try Petitioner based on a theory of equality. International and comparative law further bolster Petitioner’s argument that the Military Commissions Act’s establishment of a segregated criminal justice system in which only non-citizens are subject to military commission jurisdiction violates the equal rights of Petitioner and all non-citizens subject to its jurisdiction.

Equality is a central principle undergirding human rights law that pre-dates the founding of the United Nations and the drafting of …

Ending Security Council Resolutions, Jean Galbraith

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The Security Council resolution implementing the Iran deal spells out the terms of its own destruction. It contains a provision that allows any one of seven countries to terminate its key components. This provision – which this Comment terms a trigger termination – is both unusual and important. It is unusual because, up to now, the Security Council has almost always either not specified the conditions under which resolutions terminate or used time-based sunset clauses. It is important not only for the Iran deal, but also as a precedent and a model for the use of trigger terminations in the …

Introduction: Cyber And The Changing Face Of War, Claire Oakes Finkelstein, Kevin H. Govern

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Cyberweapons and cyberwarfare are one of the most dangerous innovations of recent years, and a significant threat to national security. Cyberweapons can imperil economic, political, and military systems by a single act, or by multifaceted orders of effect, with wide-ranging potential consequences. Cyberwarfare occupies an ambiguous status in the conventions of the laws of war. This book addresses Ethical and legal issues surrounding cyberwarfare by considering whether the Laws of Armed Conflict apply to cyberspace and the ethical position of cyberwarfare against the background of our generally recognized moral traditions in armed conflict. The book explores these moral and legal …

Cyber Espionage Or Cyber War?: International Law, Domestic Law, And Self-Protective Measures, Christopher S. Yoo

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Scholars have spent considerable effort determining how the law of war (particularly jus ad bellum and jus in bello) applies to cyber conflicts, epitomized by the Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare. Many prominent cyber operations fall outside the law of war, including the surveillance programs that Edward Snowden has alleged were conducted by the National Security Agency, the distributed denial of service attacks launched against Estonia and Georgia in 2007 and 2008, the 2008 Stuxnet virus designed to hinder the Iranian nuclear program, and the unrestricted cyber warfare described in the 1999 book by …

Roundtable Discussion Transcript: The Legal And Ethical Limits Of Technological Warfare Symposium, February 1, 2013, University Of Utah, S.J. Quinney College Of Law, Amos N. Guiora, Harry Soyster, David R. Irvine, Geoffrey S. Corn, James Jay Carafano, Claire O. Finkelstein, Laurie R. Blank, Monica Hakimi, George R. Lucas, Trevor W. Morrison, Frederic Megret

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The Utah Law Review brought in a panel of experts for a symposium on the legal and ethical limits of technological warfare. This roundtable discussion crystalized the issues discussed throughout the symposium. The collective experience and diversity of viewpoints of the panelists produced an unparalleled discussion of the complex and poignant issues involved in drone warfare. The open dialogue in the roundtable discussion created moments of tension where the panelists openly challenged each other’s viewpoints on the ethics and legality of drone warfare. The discussion captured in this transcript uniquely conveys the diversity of perspectives and inherently challenging legal and …

Advantaging Aggressors: Justice & Deterrence In International Law, Paul H. Robinson, Adil Ahmad Haque

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Current international law imposes limitations on the use of force to defend against unlawful aggression that improperly advantage unlawful aggressors and disadvantage their victims. The Article gives examples of such rules, governing a variety of situations, showing how clearly unjust they can be. No domestic criminal law system would tolerate their use.

There are good practical reasons why international law should care that its rules are perceived as unjust. Given the lack of an effective international law enforcement mechanism, compliance depends to a large degree upon the moral authority with which international law speaks. Compliance is less likely when its …

Adoption Of The Responsibility To Protect, William W. Burke-White

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This book chapter traces the legal and political origins of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine from its early origins in the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty through the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document and up to January 2011. The chapter examines the legal meaning of the Responsibility to Protect, the obligations the Responsibility imposes on states and international institutions, and its implications in for the international legal and political systems. The chapter argues that while the Responsibility to Protect has developed with extraordinary speed, it is still a norm in development rather than a binding legal rule. Its …

Torture And The Biopolitics Of Race, Dorothy E. Roberts

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No abstract provided.

Bribes V. Bombs: A Study In Coasean Warfare, Gideon Parchomovsky, Peter Siegelman

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The use of bribes to co-opt an enemy’s forces can be a more effective way to wage war than the conventional use of force: Relative to bombs, bribes can save lives and resources, and preserve civic institutions. This essay evaluates the efficacy and normative desirability of selectively substituting bribes for bombs as a means of warfare. We show how inter-country disparities in wealth, differences in military strength, the organization of the bribing and recipient forces, uncertainty about the outcome of the conflict, and communications technology can contribute to the efficacy of bribes. We discuss methods for enforcing bargains struck between …

Reply Of Professor Rudovsky To Professor Stephen I. Vladeck, "The Field Theory: Martial Law, The Suspension Power, And The Insurrection Act, David Rudovsky

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No abstract provided.

Guantanamo And The Conflict Of Laws: Rasul And Beyond, Kermit Roosevelt Iii

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No abstract provided.