Law Commons^™

Reining In The “Third Path”: Rethinking The War Powers Resolution And Private Security Contractors, Brian T. Warren

Washington and Lee Law Review

From the American Revolution to the War in Afghanistan, the United States has hired private contractors to perform a myriad of tasks, from feeding the troops to researching hypersonic missile defense systems. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the nature of work performed by these contractors began to shift. No longer were contractors relegated solely to unarmed tasks. From the jungles of Colombia to the deserts of Iraq, armed contractors—known as Private Security Contractors (PSCs)—have guarded American military bases, protected heads of state, assaulted enemy compounds, and more.

Using PSCs is not without risk. Incidents like the Nisour …

Corporate Foreign Policy In War, Kishanthi Parella

Scholarly Articles

On February 24, 2022, Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Over a year later, the war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and led to the displacement of millions. In Spring 2023, both Ukrainian and Russian forces prepared new offensives, while the United States committed to providing Ukraine with military tanks—a move that Russian officials had previously warned would constitute direct involvement in the war. While countries debated how to respond, we also witnessed the privatization of foreign policy as hundreds of companies around the world similarly sought to assist Ukraine or punish Russia using the tools of national foreign policy—humanitarian …

Submission Of Amicus Curiae Observations In The Case Of The Prosecutor V. Dominic Ongwen, Erin Baines, Kamari M. Clarke, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

The important questions laid out by the Appeals Chamber in this case highlight the need for the proper delineation and interplay between mental illness and criminal responsibility under international law. Specifically, this case represents a watershed moment for the Appeals Chamber to set a framework for adjudicating mental illness in the context of collectivized child abuse and trauma. This is especially true for former child soldiers who occupy both a victim and alleged perpetrator status.

"A Hussy Who Rode On Horseback In Sexy Underwear In Front Of The Prisoners": The Trials Of Buchenwald’S Ilse Koch, Mark A. Drumbl, Solange Mouthaan

Scholarly Articles

Ilse Koch’s trials for her role in atrocities at the Nazi Buchenwald concentration camp served as visual spectacles and primed her portrayal in media and public spaces. Koch’s conduct was credibly rumored to be one of frequent affairs, simultaneous lovers, and the sexual humiliation of prisoners. The gendered construction of her sexual identity played a distortive role in her intersections with law and with post-conflict Germany. Koch’s trials revealed two different dynamics. Koch’s actions were refracted through a patriarchal lens which spectacularized female violence and served as an optical space to (re)establish appropriate feminine mores. Feminist critiques of Koch’s trials …

Weapons Of Mass Distortion: Applying The Principles Of The Fcc’S News Distortion Doctrine To Undisclosed Financial Conflicts Of Interest In Corporate News Media’S Military Coverage, Charles L. Bonani

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

This Note offers a new conception of news distortion in mass media. It explores the intentions behind the FCC’s News Distortion Doctrine and analyzes its primarily dormant status throughout its existence. This Note then examines televised media coverage of U.S. military actions and identifies undisclosed financial conflicts of interests throughout this coverage. In examining these undisclosed conflicts and the reasons behind them, this Note explains why they constitute news distortion under the FCC’s definition, and why the principles behind the Doctrine are implicated. This Note then proposes the FCC promulgate a disclosure rule to remedy the undisclosed financial conflicts of …

Children In Armed Conflict, In The Oxford Handbook Of Children’S Rights Law (Jonathan Todres & Shani M. King Eds., 2020), Mark A. Drumbl

Books and Chapters

This chapter addresses a particularly vulnerable population of children, namely, children associated with armed forces or armed groups. These children are colloquially known as child soldiers. This chapter begins by surveying the prevalence of child soldiering globally. It then sets out the considerable amount of international law that addresses children in armed conflict, in particular, the law that allocates responsibility for child soldiering and the law that sets out the responsibility of child soldiers for their conduct. The chapter identifies significant gaps between the law and the securing of positive outcomes for former child soldiers, notably when it comes to …

Memorializing Dissent: Justice Pal In Tokyo, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

Memorials and monuments are envisioned as positive ways to honor victims of atrocity. Such displays are taken as intrinsically benign, respectful, and in accord with the arc of justice. Is this correlation axiomatic, however? Art, after all, may be a vehicle for multiple normativities, contested experiences, and variable veracities. Hence, in order to really speak about the relationships between the aesthetic and international criminal law, one must consider the full range of initiatives—whether pop-up ventures, alleyway graffiti, impromptu ceremonies, street art, and grassroots public histories—prompted by international criminal trials. Courts may be able to stage their own outreach, to be …

Post-Genocide Justice In Rwanda, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

The Rwandan genocide triggered a vast number of criminal and quasi-criminal prosecutions. Rwanda therefore constitutes an example of a robust and rapid implementation of criminal accountability for atrocity. Rwanda, moreover, departed from other countries – such as South Africa – by eschewing a truth and reconciliation process as part of a transitional justice process. This chapter unpacks three levels of judicialization that promoted criminal responsibility for atrocity in Rwanda: the ICTR, specialized chambers of national courts, and gacaca proceedings. The ICTR indicted roughly 90 individuals, the national courts convicted in the area of 10,000 defendants (with some proceedings remaining ongoing), …

The Many Harms Of Forced Marriage: Insights For Law From Ethnography In Northern Uganda, Myriam S. Denov, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

Harnessing an interdisciplinary framework that merges elements of law and social science, this article aims to recast the crime of forced marriage, and thereby enhance accountability, in light of knowledge acquired through ethnographic fieldwork in northern Uganda. More specifically, we draw upon the perspectives and experiences of 20 men who were "bush husbands" in the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). These men were abducted by the LRA between the ages of 10 and 38 and spent between 6 and 24 years in captivity. During their time in the LRA, these men became ‘bush husbands’ with each man fathering between 1 and …

Dogs Of War Get A New Lease On Life: Why The Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act Violates The Eighth Amendment In Light Of United States V. Slatten, Michael D. Stinnett-Kassoff

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

The United States has relied on Private Military Firms (PMFs) extensively to carry out its numerous overseas military missions since the end of the Cold War. Civilians and contractors have always had a place in American wars, even during the American Revolution and beyond. But the recent American incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq brought an unprecedented number of private contractors into the forefront of these conflict zones, the discussions surrounding them, and the legal questions arising from their ashes. Particularly, private contractors in Iraq seemed to be operating in a legal grey area—they clearly were not soldiers, and they clearly …

Book Review, Marcos Zunino, Justice Framed: A Genealogy Of Transitional Justice (2019), Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

Transitional justice initiatives, broadly speaking, respond to systematic human rights abuses. These initiatives take multiple shapes and forms. This means that the actual practice of transitional justice is diverse and organic. Transitional justice discourse, however, is aspirational, normative and selective. It is less heterogeneous and far more directive. Marcos Zunino’s eye-opening book, Justice Framed, is about gaps between narrative discourse and tangible practice. It is about the effects of discourse on practice. More pointedly, Justice Framed is about how discourse ‘surfaces’ certain kinds of practices of the past while sidelining and ignoring others. Hence, to come full circle, this book …

The Kapo On Film: Tragic Perpetrators And Imperfect Victims, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

The Nazis coerced and enlisted detainees into the administration of the labour and death camps. These detainees were called Kapos. The Kapos constitute a particularly contested, and at times tabooified, element of Holocaust remembrance. Some Kapos deployed their situational authority to ease the conditions of other prisoners, while others acted cruelly and committed abuse. This project explores treatment of the Kapo on film. This paper considers two films: Kapò (1959, directed by Pontecorvo, Italy) and Kapo (2000, directed by Setton, Israel). These two films vary in genre: Kapò (1959) is a feature fiction movie, whereas Kapo (2000) is a documentary. …

Epilogue: Homecoming Kings, Queens, Jesters, And Nobodies, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

This epilogue unpacks the return of convicted war criminals as homecomings, with all the attendant rites, rituals, and expectations. Knotting together the various papers in this edited collection, this paper examines how the international community constructs an ideal homecoming and, in turn, how such a construction may simply be fanciful.

Book Review, Anton Weiss-Wendt, The Soviet Union And The Gutting Of The Un Genocide Convention (2017), Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

Weiss-Wendt’s book unpacks what happened to “genocide” as it journeyed along this path of codification. To be clear, codification was conditioned by compromise among states; and states were often motivated by Cold War selfishness, spite, manipulation, and machination. The Convention narrowed—and even mangled—the set of protected groups to national, ethnic, racial, and religious. The Convention, moreover, limited the recognized forms that genocide could take. The title of Weiss-Wendt’s book reflects its argument that the expansiveness of genocide as an idea was “gutted” in the process of codifying it in an international treaty.

Book Review, Jamie Rowen, Searching For Truth In The Transitional Justice Movement (2017) & Leonie Steinl, Child Soldiers As Agents Of War And Peace: A Restorative Transitional Justice Approach To Accountability For Crimes Under International Law (2017), Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

Why do truth commissions emerge following some conflicts but not others? Jamie Rowen tackles this question in Searching for Truth in the Transitional Justice Movement. Rowen approaches this topic through a detailed study of three jurisdictions: the former Yugoslavia, Colombia, and the United States. Although truth commissions did progress in Colombia, they stalled in both the former Yugoslavia in the wake of the Balkan Wars as well as in the United States in regard to the conduct of US officials after the events on 11 September 2001. Rowen unpacks what happened and what failed to happen — and why …

Warfare As Regulation, Robert Knowles

Washington and Lee Law Review

The United States government’s national security activities, including the use of force, consume more than half of all federal discretionary spending and are carried out by the world’s largest bureaucracy. Yet existing scholarship treats these activities as conduct to be regulated, rather than as forms of regulatory action.

This Article introduces a new paradigm for depicting what agencies involved in national security do. It posits that, like other agencies, the national security bureaucracy is best understood to be engaging in regulatory activity—by targeting, detaining, interrogating, and prosecuting enemies; patrolling the border; and conducting surveillance and covert actions. Also, like other …

Biometric Cyberintelligence And The Posse Comitatus Act, Margaret Hu

Scholarly Articles

This Article addresses the rapid growth of what the military and the intelligence community refer to as “biometric-enabled intelligence.” This newly emerging intelligence tool is reliant upon biometric databases—for example, digitalized storage of scanned fingerprints and irises, digital photographs for facial recognition technology, and DNA. This Article introduces the term “biometric cyberintelligence” to more accurately describe the manner in which this new tool is dependent upon cybersurveillance and big data’s massintegrative systems.

This Article argues that the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, designed to limit the deployment of federal military resources in the service of domestic policies, will be difficult …

From Mayberry To Ferguson: The Militarization Of American Policing Equipment, Culture, And Mission, Cadman R. Kiker Iii

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

We are at the dawn of a new era of policing in the United States. In recent months, images of armed police officers patrolling the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, and of a toddler burned by a Georgia SWAT team’s grenade have been indelibly branded into America’s social consciousness. There is a unique bipartisan outcry from Washington in a time otherwise marked by bitter political divides. Politicians and journalists alike are questioning the efficacy of a militaristic police force and the path that led to this shift in the paradigm of policing.

This Essay examines the how and why of police …

The Role Of The Courts In Time Of War, William C. Banks

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The role of the courts in judging the actions of government in wartime has ranged from extreme deference to careful probing of alleged government excesses over more than two centuries. The courts’ record has reflected the nature of the armed conflicts the United States has engaged in and the legal bases for the actions at issue. In the aggregate, the courts have served as a necessary counterweight to government overreaching in times of national security crisis. It is easy to underestimate the institutional problems confronting judges who are asked to make momentous decisions in times of national crisis—difficulties of fact-finding …

Ask, Tell, But Do Not Get Greedy: The Inequalities That Pervade In The Military In Light Of The Repeal Of “Don’T Ask, Don’T Tell”, David Barnes

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

A Dark Descent Into Reality: Making The Case For An Objective Definition Of Torture, Michael W. Lewis

Washington and Lee Law Review

The definition of torture is broken. The malleability of the term "severe pain or suffering" at the heart of the definition has created a situation in which the world agrees on the words but cannot agree on their meaning. The "V know it when I see it" nature of the discussion of torture makes it clear that the definition is largely left to the eye of the beholder. This is particularly problematic when international Law's reliance on self-enforcement is considered After discussing current misconceptions about intelligence gathering and coercion that are common to all sides of the torture debate, this …

The Push To Criminalize Aggression: Something Lost Amid The Gains?, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

The International Criminal Court has jurisdiction over the crime of aggression, but the Rome Statute fails to define the crime. A Special Work- ing Group on the Crime of Aggression, however, has made considerable progress in developing a definition. The consensus that has emerged favors a narrow definition. Three characteristics animate this consensus: (1) that state action is central to the crime; (2) that acts of aggression involve inter- state armed conflict; and (3) that criminal responsibility attaches only to very top political or military leaders. This Article normatively challenges this consensus. I argue that expanding the scope of the …

Karen E. Woody, Putting Pandora On Trial, 98 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 699 (2008) (Reviewing Mark A. Drumbl, Atrocity, Punishment, And International Law (2007)), Karen E. Woody

Scholarly Articles

In the wake of increasing globalization over the past fifty years, international criminal law has transformed from a toothless shadow into a concrete reality; the International Criminal Court is the most recent and impressive institutional accomplishment. Unfortunately, international criminal law has enjoyed this progress on the heels of increasingly horrific international crimes. International adjudicatory institutions have taken many forms and the sentences they deliver have varied widely. In Atrocity, Punishment, and International Law, Mark Drumbl reviews the strides made in international criminal law from the Nuremberg trials through present-day trials, particularly those related to the crimes committed in Rwanda and …

Inadequate Checks And Balances: Critiquing The Imbalance Of Power In Arms Export Regulation, Charles L. Capito Iii

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Redefining Torture In The Age Of Terrorism: An Argument Against The Dilution Of Human Rights, Miri Lim

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Fear Of A Blackened Planet: Pressured By The War On Terror, Courts Ignore The Erosion Of The Attorney-Client Privilege And Effective Assistance Of Counsel In 28 C.F.R § 501.3(D) Cases, Chris Ford

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Guantanamo, Rasul, And The Twilight Of Law, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

In Rasul v. Bush, the Supreme Court held that U.S. district courts have jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay. In this paper, I explore what has happened since the Rasul decision: most notably, the introduction of combatant status review tribunals as a response to Rasul and the challenges that have been filed thereto and adjudicated in the federal courts (Khalid, In re Guantanamo Detainee Cases); the charges brought against certain detainees by military commissions and challenges to these commissions filed in the …

'Lesser Evils' In The War On Terrorism, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Imputing War Crimes In The War On Terrorism: The U.S., Northern Alliance, And 'Container Crimes', Ahmed S. Younis

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Don't Forget What We're Fighting For: Will The Fourth Amendment Be A Casualty Of The War On Terror?, Heath H. Galloway

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.