Digital Commons Network^™

You're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat: Alternatives To The Un Security Council For Enforcing Nuclear Disarmament And Human Rights, David A. Koplow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There is a serious problem with the Security Council. That institution endowed by the United Nations Charter with "primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security" -- has stood at the apex of the global political, diplomatic, and legal structure for seventy years, responding (more or less) to the full panoply of incessant dangers and provocations. The Charter could not have been crafted or sustained without it, and the Security Council has, at least, assisted in preserving a measure of fundamental world order-in particular, it has helped avoid the cataclysm of a World War III.

But a central …

The Usa Patriot Act And Punctuated Equilibrium, Michael Sanders

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Currently, Title II of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT Act) Act of 2001 appears to be stalled as a result of controversy over the intent and meaning of the law. Proponents of the title advocate the necessity of the act to combat modern terrorism, whereas opponents warn of circumventions of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Using punctuated equilibrium as the theoretical foundation, the purpose of this case study was to explore the dialogue and legal exchanges between the American Civil Liberties Union and the Department of …

Regulation 2.0: The Marriage Of New Governance And "Lex Informatica", Abbey Stemler

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Throughout history, disruptive technologies have transformed industry and signaled the destruction or creation of regulatory structures. When crafting regulations, governments often utilize Regulation 1.0 approaches, characterized by top-down design standards that dictate exactly how the regulated must act in order to prevent market failures. Regulation 1.0 increases barriers to entry and decreases the room for business experimentation. Regulation 2.0, by contrast, is a theoretical approach for regulating companies that rely on platform-mediated networks. It marries New Governance theory and the concept of lex informatica. This marriage allows for the collaborative creation of design standards that are then enforced through mediating …

Protecting Cultural Heritage As A Means For International Peace, Security And Stability, Mark V. Vlasic, Helga Turku

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Cultural aggression has become a strategy to obtain an advantage during war. In a deliberate and methodical pattern extremists have not only damaged and destroyed historical sites in Iraq and Syria, but they have also looted antiquities to raise money for their terrorist activities. In addition to degrading the victims' identities, such acts decrease the wealth of knowledge of the world as a whole. By examining various treaties and case law on cultural property, this Article highlights the importance of holding these perpetrators accountable. Furthermore, the protection of cultural property in war zones should be an element in the whole …

Work And The Legal Person In Thomas More's Utopia, Andreea D. Boboc

University of the Pacific Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Road To Artificial Super-Intelligence: Has International Law A Role To Play?, J.-G. Castel, Matthew E. Castel

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Part I of this article deals with the road to artificial general super-intelligence.

Part II addresses the controls, if any, that should be exercised over the production and use of partially or fully autonomous machines of artificial intelligence before and after they become super-intelligent. More particularly, should there be legal and ethical limits to their use and to what extent should international law play a role in this connection?

Cyber Force: The International Legal Implications Of The Communication Security Establishment's Expanded Mandate Under Bill C-59, Leah West

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Canada is about to join the ranks of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea; countries with a declared policy and authorized program of state-sponsored cyber attacks. In the summer of 2017, the Liberal Government introduced Bill C-59 An Act 2 Respecting National Security Matters. The bill, if passed, represents the most significant overhaul to Canadian national security institutions since the establishment of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) as a separate organization from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in 1984. One component of this sweeping reform is the introduction of The Communications Security Establishment Act (CSE Act or the …

The Combatant's Stance: Autonomous Weapons On The Battlefield, Jens David Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Do Autonomous Weapon Systems (AWS) qualify as moral or rational agents? This paper argues that combatants on the battlefield are required by the demands of behavior interpretation to approach a sophisticated AWS with the “Combatant’s Stance” — the ascription of mental states required to understand the system’s strategic behavior on the battlefield. However, the fact that an AWS must be engaged with the combatant’s stance does not entail that other persons are relieved of criminal or moral responsibility for war crimes committed by autonomous weapons. This article argues that military commanders can and should be held responsible for perpetrating war …

Should The Best Offenses Ever Be A Good Defense: The Public Authority To Use Force In Millitary Operations: Recalibrating The Use Of Force Rules In The Standing Rules Of Engagement, Gary Corn

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's Standing Rules of Engagement/StandingRules for the Use of Force (SROE/SRUF)for U.S. Forces provides strategic guidance to the armed forces on the authority to use force during all military operations. The standing self-defense rules in the SROE for national, unit, and individual self-defense form the core of these use-of-force authorities. The SROE self-defense rules are incorrectly built on a unitary jus ad bellum framework, legally inapplicable below the level of national self-defense. Coupled with the pressures of sustained counter-insurgency operations, this misalignment of individual and unit self-defense authorities has led to a conflation …

Why The Hurry To Regulate Autonomous Weapon Systems-But Not Cyber-Weapons?, Kenneth Anderson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Guerilla Warefare: The Importance Of Pharmaceutical Company Support, Or Lack Thereof, In The Constitutionality Of The Death Penalty In The United States, Megan Doyle

University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Should The Best Offense Ever Be A Good Defense?, Colonel Gary P. Corn

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's Standing Rules of Engagement/Standing Rules for the Use of Force (SROE/SRUF) for U.S. Forces provides strategic guidance to the armed forces on the authority to use force during all military operations. The standing self-defense rules in the SROE for national, unit, and individual self-defense form the core of these use-of-force authorities. The SROE self-defense rules are incorrectly built on a unitary jus ad bellum framework, legally inapplicable below the level of national self-defense. Coupled with the pressures of sustained counter-insurgency operations, this misalignment of individual and unit self-defense authorities has led to …

Terrorists And Antiquities: Lessons From The Destruction Of The Bamiyan Buddhas, Current Isis Aggression, And A Proposed Framework For Cultural Property Crimes, Whitney Bren

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Cybersecurity In Critical Infrastructure Sectors: A Proactive Approach To Ensure Inevitable Laws And Regulations Are Effective, Chris Laughlin

Colorado Technology Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Protecting Intellectual Property And Privacy In The Digital Age: The Use Of National Cybersecurity Strategies To Mitigate Cyber Risk, Scott J. Schackelford

Chapman Law Review

No abstract provided.

Is It Time To Adopt A No-Fault Scheme To Compensate Injured Patients?, Elaine Gibson

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The tort system is roundly indicted for its inadequacies in providing compensation in response to injury. More egregious is its response to injuries incurred due to negligence in the provision of healthcare services specifically. Despite numerous calls for reform, tort-based compensation has persisted as the norm to date. However, recent developments regarding physician malpractice lead to consideration of the possibility of a move to “no-fault” compensation for healthcare-related injuries. In this paper, I explore these developments, examine programs in various foreign jurisdictions which have adopted no-fault compensation for medical injury, and discuss the wisdom and feasibility of adopting an administratively-based …

Sovereignty’S Gray Area: The Delimitation Of Air And Space In The Context Of Aerospace Vehicles And The Use Of Force, Matthew T. King

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

Debate over the delimitation of airspace and outer space has persisted since the dawn of the space age, without resolution. With the development of hybrid aerospace vehicles that can operate in and transition between the two zones, the line between their disparate legal regimes will be tested. And this test may not come with an after-the-fact courtroom debate over applicable liability regimes, but rather it may come with a real-time decision made in a military operations center as to whether an aerospace vehicle has violated sovereign airspace and should be shot down. The recent shoot-down of a Russian bomber by …

False Rubicons, Moral Panic & Conceptual Cul-De-Sacs: Critiquing & Reframing The Call To Ban Lethal Autonomous Weapons, Chris Jenks

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Casting into the indeterminate future and projecting visions of so-called killer robots, The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots (The Campaign) has incited moral panic in an attempt to stimulate a discussion and ultimately a ban on lethal autonomous weapons (LAWS). Their efforts have been superficially successful but come at a self-defeating substantive cost. In the hope of shifting the dialogue from the hyperbolic to a constructive dialogue on the interaction between human and machine abilities in both current and future weapon systems, this article explores the conceptual paradox implicit in The Campaign and proposes an alternative.

Having provoked the international …

A Rose By Any Other Name: How The United States Charges Its Service Members For Violating The Laws Of War, Chris Jenks

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This chapter examines the US practice of not charging its service members with war crimes. The chapter briefly explains how the United States asserts criminal jurisdiction over its service members before turning to how the US military reports violations of the laws of war. It then sets out the US methodology for charging such violations as applied to its service members, and compares this methodology to that applied to those tried by military commissions. The chapter then discusses the varied meanings of the term ‘war crimes’ and the way in which the 1949 Geneva Conventions can provide a benchmark against …

'Protection And Empire': The Martens Clause, State Sovereignty, And Individual Rights, Jeffrey D. Kahn

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The Martens Clause was a last-minute compromise that saved the 1899 Hague Convention with Respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land. In its original formulation, the clause shielded individuals under “the protection and empire” of international law, principles of humanity, and the dictates of the public conscience. F. F. Martens, its author, was Russia’s greatest international law scholar and occasional diplomat. He saw no application for his work in the nineteenth-century internal affairs of his sovereign, notwithstanding the transnational terrorism that plagued (and ultimately destroyed) the Russian Empire. As the relationship between individual rights and state sovereignty …

The Last Poor Plunder From A Bleeding Land: The Failure Of International Law To Protect Syrian Antiquities, Mackenzie Warner

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The Syrian civil war has led to the looting and destruction of a significant amount of the country's cultural heritage. The rise of ISIS in Syria and its exploitation of cultural heritage for propaganda and financial gain has exacerbated this damage. Further, international treaty protections of cultural heritage during armed conflict contain significant weaknesses impeding their ability to effectively protect antiquities in the post-9/11 context of modern armed conflict that substantially involves non-state armed groups and acts of terrorism occurring outside the event of declared war. The primary international protections of cultural heritage during armed conflict consist of the 1954 …

From Apology To Utopia's Point Of Attack, Justin Deystone

Publications

This contribution to the Symposium celebrating the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of Martti Koskenniemi's From Apology to Utopia explores the relevance of the book for contemporary theorists of the international world. In doing so, the article puts Koskenniemi's classic in a contest with John Yoo's recent book, Point of Attack. The purpose in doing so is three-fold. First, it is to illustrate the contemporary use of Koskenniemi's structuralist method. Second, it is to show how the use of the method, with its attendant reliance on modes of legal thought, might give pause to international thinkers seeking to reinvigorate particular structures of …

Armed Drones: An Age Old Problem Exacerbated By New Technology, Grant H. Frazier

Pomona Senior Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the history behind and the use of militarized drones in modern day conflicts, and to conclude whether the use of these machines, with special attention to the United States, is legal, ethical, and morally defensible. In achieving the aforementioned goals, shortcomings of current policy surrounding drone warfare will be highlighted, acting as the catalyst for a proposal for changes to be made to better suit legal, ethical, and moral considerations. The proposal of a policy to help us work with armed drones is due to the fact that this thesis acknowledges that …

Fighting To Lose The Vote: How The Solider Voting Acts Of 1942 And 1944 Disenfranchised America's Armed Forces, Molly Guptill Manning

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Will Lgbt Antidiscrimination Law Follow The Course Of Race Discrimination Law, Robert S. Chang

Faculty Articles

This Article examines several decades of race antidiscrimination law to conjecture about the course LGBT civil rights might take following Obergefell v. Hodges. It draws from Alan Freeman’s germinal Minnesota Law Review article, Legitimizing Racial Discrimination Through Antidiscrimination Law: A Critical Review of Supreme Court Doctrine, and asks whether Freeman’s thesis that race antidiscrimination law actually serves to legitimize the status quo of real-world racial inequality might apply with equal force in the context of LGBT civil rights and LGBT inequality. The Article suggests that the Court may develop, similar to its colorblind constitutionalism, a “sexuality-blind constitutionalism” in which formal …

Aggregate Litigation & All That We Do Not Know, Brooke D. Coleman

Faculty Articles

A good article raises a normative question, wrestles with it, and ultimately answers it. A great article also inspires the reader to cogitate. Briana Rosenbaum's The Rico Trend in Class Action Warfare, is undoubtedly a great article. The article addresses a complex and interesting issue-the use of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations ("RICO") statute to sanction attorneys-while also inspiring thought about other fascinating questions. My Response to the article will focus on one such question: What do we really know about aggregate litigation?

The Eritrean-Ethiopian War (1998-2000), Sean D. Murphy

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The Eritrean-Ethiopian War of 1998-2000 was a tragic conflict that resulted in a widespread loss of life, as well as other injury and damage, for these two developing countries in the Horn of Africa. A unique feature of this incident is that the December 2000 Algiers agreement ending the conflict provided for the establishment of an Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission (claims commission), charged with deciding claims for loss, damage or injury resulting from a violation of international law committed by either country. One of Ethiopia’s claims was that Eritrea initiated the armed conflict by an illegal use of force. Thus, the …

Constitutional Rhetoric, Jamal Greene

Faculty Scholarship

For close to a century, students of judicial behavior have suggested that what judges think is not altogether the same as what they say. Within the legal academy, this claim has long been associated with legal realists who have argued that the formal legal rules explicated in judicial opinions are at least partly epiphenomenal, masking the influence that the personal characteristics and dispositions of adjudicators exercise over legal outcomes. Political scientists have argued, variously, that such outcomes are determined by ideology, social background, or political, professional, or other institutional constraints.

The notion that at least some “extralegal” factors influence judicial …

Person, State, Or Not: The Place Of Business Corporations In Our Constitutional Order, Daniel J.H. Greenwood

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

Business corporations are critical institutions in our democratic republican market-based economic order. The United States Constitution, however, is completely silent as to their status in our system. The Supreme Court has filled this silence by repeatedly granting corporations rights against the citizenry and its elected representatives.

Instead, we ought to view business corporations, like municipal corporations, as governance structures created by We the People to promote our general Welfare. On this social contract view, corporations should have the constitutional rights specified in the constitutional text: none. Instead, we should be debating which rights of citizens against governmental agencies should also …

Mass Incarceration: An Annotated Bibliography, Nicole P. Dyszlewski, Lucinda Harrison-Cox, Raquel Ortiz

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.