Law Commons^™

Aumf Panel Transcript, Rosa Brooks, Benjamin Wittes

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Future As A Concept In National Security Law, Mary L. Dudziak

Pepperdine Law Review

With their focus on the future of national security law, the essays in this issue share a common premise: that the future matters to legal policy, and that law must take the future into account. But what is this future? And what conception of the future do national security lawyers have in mind? The future is, in an absolute sense, unknowable. Absent a time machine, we cannot directly experience it. Yet human action is premised on ideas about the future, political scientist Harold Lasswell wrote in his classic work The Garrison State. The ideas about the future that guide social …

Lost In Translation? The Relevancy Of Kobe Bryant And Aristotle To The Legality Of Modern Warfare, Rachel E. Vanlandingham

Pepperdine Law Review

What do Kobe Bryant, Aristotle, and the continuing U.S. response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, have in common? President Barack Obama told the New Yorker in early 2014, in response to a question regarding the seeming resurgence of al Qaeda in Syria and Iraq, that “[t]he analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.” As this example demonstrates, the Obama Administration and others, in reference to the legality of the use of armed force against al Qaeda and similar …

The Boundless War: Challenging The Notion Of A Global Armed Conflict Against Al-Qaeda And Its Affiliates, Andrew Beshai

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

The U.S. military response to the 9/11 attacks has expanded into a “global war” without a definite geographic scope. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have executed attacks in several countries including Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen under the “global war” paradigm. This Article challenges the concept of a global armed conflict, instead favoring the “epicenter-of-hostilities” framework for determining the legality of military action against Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and other terrorist groups. This approach, rooted in established international law, measures the existence of specific criteria in each nation where hostile forces are present to determine if an armed conflict in …

Fair Trade: The President’S Power To Recover Captured U.S. Servicemembers And The Recent Prisoner Exchange With The Taliban, Celidon Pitt

Fordham Law Review

The Obama Administration’s controversial exchange of five Taliban detainees for a captured U.S. soldier in May 2014 reignited a heated debate over the proper scope of wartime executive authority. From a legal perspective, the primary issue centers on the constitutional balance of power between congressional appropriations and the President’s power as Commander in Chief. A complete analysis incorporates both judicial and historical precedent to evaluate the conflict within the broader context of prisoner recovery efforts.

This Note argues that, regardless of the validity of legislative restrictions on the transfer of Guantánamo detainees, the President possessed sufficient authority to conduct the …

Law Of War Developments Issue Introduction, David Glazier

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

"The Long And Winding Road": Reflections On America's War(S) On Terrorism And Counterterrorism Efforts Post 9/11, Francis J. Larkin

University of Massachusetts Law Review

September 11, 2001 was surely evil incarnate. But out of the shadows and embers of such devilish devastation, going forward, for society to “endure”‖, let alone “prevail”, a “lasting good” must emerge; an enduring immutable and sustainable commitment to peace and non-violence. And, of course, any “lasting good”‖, however utopian or pragmatic would surely require destruction and eradication of terrorism in all of its diverse incarnations; the eradication and destruction of the machinery of terrorism wherever it is found. Long range, it must be the goal, aspiration and belief that out of the seeds and memory of 9/11 there might …