Law Commons^™

Reassessing The Ahistorical Judicial Use Of William Winthrop And Frederick Bernays Wiener, Joshua E. Kastenberg

Faculty Scholarship

Government lawyers, like the courts continue to cite to Winthrop. Most recently, in the pending appeal titled Larabee v. Harker, the government ‘s counsel quoted Winthrop for the proposition that “retired officers are a part of the army and so triable by court-martial—a fact indeed never admitting of question.” It is unlikely that the government’s counsel considered the matters presented in this brief article, or that Winthrop rested his statement on dicta rather than any constitutional statement on jurisdiction. Likewise, whatever criticism may be given to Justice Alito’s Ortiz dissent, I am not suggesting that either he, or Justice Neil …

Civil Military Relations Panel, Joshua E. Kastenberg

Faculty Scholarship

In the first week of this month, the nation was surprised to learn that retired general officers (generals and admirals) including James Mattis, Colin Powell, Michael Glenn Mullen, and William McRaven (to name a few) spoke out against President Donald Trump’s response to demonstrations across the United States. President Trump threatened to unilaterally invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act and federalize the National Guard as well as use the active duty Armed Forces of the United States as a “super police force.”

The conduct of the retired generals is not without detractors. The Constitution was constructed with the idea that a …

National Security And Judicial Ethics: The Exception To The Rule Of Keeping Judicial Conduct Judicial And The Politicization Of The Judiciary, Joshua E. Kastenberg

Faculty Scholarship

This article is divided into three sections, and it incorporates original research from the personal correspondences of several judges and justices. This article includes unpublished correspondences from various judicial collections at the Library of Congress, the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, the Washington and Lee School of Law’s special collections, the Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan Presidential Libraries, the National Library of Australia in Canberra, and Canada’s National Archives in Ottawa. The first section analyzes the current framework governing judicial disqualification based on the separation of powers doctrine as well as the right to an impartial judiciary, …

Lt. Col. Vindman Is A Patriot, Joshua E. Kastenberg

Faculty Scholarship

Op-ed: Kastenberg discusses how it is the duty of a commissioned officer to report activity they consider legally questionable and it is within their duty to testify before Congress.

Book Review: Aisling Swaine, Conflict-Related Violence Against Women: Transforming Transition (2018), Jennifer Moore

Faculty Scholarship

Acknowledging that rape is sometimes utilized as a “weapon of war” represents an important development in humanitarian action and scholarly inquiry. However, Aisling Swaine instructs this is but one important facet of the range of harms women experience in time of war, not to mention in peacetime. Swaine articulates two powerful themes: the variant nature of violence against women in times of war, and the other concerns its ambulant nature over time.

Swaine’s treatment of “conflict-related violence against women” represents an important contribution to the canon of feminist scholarship on gender-based violence. Her insights emerge from qualitative research she conducted …