Law Commons^™

Future-Proofing U.S. Laws For War Crimes Investigations In The Digital Era, Rebecca Hamilton

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Advances in information technology have irrevocably changed the nature of war crimes investigations. The pursuit of accountability for the most serious crimes of concern to the international community now invariably requires access to digital evidence. The global reach of platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter means that much of that digital evidence is held by U.S. social media companies, and access to it is subject to the U.S. Stored Communications Act.

This is the first Article to look at the legal landscape facing international investigators seeking access to digital evidence regarding genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression. It …

Securing Patent Law, Charles Duan

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

A vigorous conversation about intellectual property rights and national security has largely focused on the defense role of those rights, as tools for responding to acts of foreign infringement. But intellectual property, and patents in particular, also play an arguably more important offense role. Foreign competitor nations can obtain and assert U.S. patents against U.S. firms and creators. Use of patents as an offense strategy can be strategically coordinated to stymie domestic innovation and technological progress. This Essay considers current and possible future practices of patent exploitation in this offense setting, with a particular focus on China given the nature …

Sunshine Laws Behind The Clouds: Limited Transparency In A Time Of National Emergency, Ira P. Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically changed the way citizens lived their lives, businesses operated, and governments functioned. With most people forced to stay home, the pandemic also disrupted how people received their news and other essential information. Public records and public meetings had to adapt to face the growing challenges in a locked-down world. While some governmental bodies were able to keep up with the threat that COVID-19 posed against transparency, others either failed to acclimate to the new normal or actively took advantage of the circumstances to limit how much the public knew not only about the crisis, but about …

National Security Decision-Making In The Age Of Technology: Delivering Outcomes On Time And On Target, Gary Corn

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Of Monopolies And Monocultures: The Intersection Of Patents And National Security, Charles Duan

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

It was certainly an odd thing for the Department of Justice attorney arguing for the United States to appear before the Ninth Circuit to tell the appellate judges that a federal agency was wrong. This was what happened in a Federal Trade Commission enforcement action against Qualcomm Inc., a semiconductor technology company. As a substantial holder of patents on mobile communications technologies and also a leading manufacturer of chips used in that same industry, the FTC charged Qualcomm with anticompetitive conduct; the district court agreed and enjoined Qualcomm from certain patent licensing practices. It was that award of injunctive relief …

Sovereignty In The Age Of Cyber, Gary Corn

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

International law is a foundational pillar of the modern international order, and its applicability to both state and nonstate cyber activities is, by now, beyond question. However, owing to the unique and rapidly evolving nature of cyberspace, its ubiquitous interconnectivity, its lack of segregation between the private and public sectors, and its incompatibility with traditional concepts of geography, there are difficult and unresolved questions about exactly how international law applies to this domain. Chief among these is the question of the exact role that the principle of sovereignty plays in regulating states' cyber activities.

Concluding Observations On Sovereignty In Cyberspace, Gary Corn, Robert Taylor

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In Sorerejgntyin Cyberspace: Lex Lata Vel Non?, Michael Schmitt and Liis Vihul argue that territorial sovereignty is a primary rule of international law that limits cyber activities. They recognize, however, that not all cyber effects constitute violations of territorial sovereignty, and like Rule 4 in the Tallinn Manual 2.0 and its commentary, they acknowledge a distinct lack of consensus among the Tallinn participants on the critical question of applicable thresholds. Problematically, they do not identify the necessary state practice and opinio juris that would be required to establish either the primary rule that they proffer or the existence and contours …

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

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic 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 …

Pre-Crime Restraints: The Explosion Of Targeted, Non-Custodial Prevention, Jennifer Daskal

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This Article exposes the ways in which noncustodial pre-crime restraints have proliferated over the past decade, focusing in particular on three notable examples — terrorism-related financial sanctions, the No Fly List, and the array of residential, employment, and related restrictions imposed on sex offenders. Because such restraints do not involve physical incapacitation, they are rarely deemed to infringe core liberty interests. Because they are preventive, not punitive, criminal law procedural protections do not apply. They have exploded largely unchecked — subject to little more than bare rationality review and negligible procedural protections — and without any coherent theory as to …

After The Aumf, Jennifer Daskal

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Over a dozen years later, the AUMF — which has never been amended — remains the principal source of the U.S. government’s domestic legal authority to use military force against al Qaeda and its associates, both on the battlefields of Afghanistan and far beyond. But even as the statutory framework has remained unchanged, the facts on the ground have evolved dramatically, leading some to call for a new AUMF. In short, calls for a new framework statute to replace the AUMF are unnecessary, provocative, and counterproductive; they perpetuate war at a time when we should be seeking to end it. …

Hamdan V. United States: A Death Knell For Military Commissions?, Jennifer Daskal

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In October 2012, a panel of the D.C. Circuit dealt a blow to the United States’ post- September 11, 2001 decade-long experiment with military commissions as a forum for trying Guantanamo Bay detainees. Specifically, the court concluded that prior to the 2006 statutory reforms, military commission jurisdiction was limited to violations of internationally-recognized war crimes; that providing material support to terrorism was not an internationally-recognized war crime; and that the military commission conviction of Salim Hamdan for material support charges based on pre-2006 conduct was therefore invalid. Three months later, a panel of the D.C. Circuit reached the same conclusion …

Maritime Piracy: A Sustainable Global Solution, Paul Williams, Lowry Pressly

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Maritime piracy is a complex transnational security concern characterized by emerging international finance operations and organization, an oversupply of labor, and a low cost of market entry. This article provides a realistic picture of the driving forces behind maritime piracy in areas such as Southeast Asia, the Gulf of Aden, and the Gulf of Guinea. By examining some of the assumptions and proposed solutions in counter-piracy literature and policy, this article exposes some piracy illusions and proposes a sustainable, global response that addresses the persistent threat of modern maritime piracy. Today's manifold piracy challenges call for a multifaceted approach. Accordingly, …

The Law Of Operational Targeting: Viewing The Loac Through An Operational Lens, Gary Corn

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Air and missile warfare is and will almost certainly continue to be a ubiquitous aspect of contemporary armed conflicts. Yet, the law related to the regulation of this aspect of warfare has failed to develop at the same pace as the methods and means of employing such combat assets. The Manual on International Law Applicable to Air and Missile Warfare (AMW Manual)' is therefore without question an important development in the law of armed conflict. Although not hard law, it reflects the consensus of some of the most respected jus in bello scholars in the world on how existing law …

9/11 And The Transformation Of U.S. Immigration Law And Policy, Jayesh Rathod

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Preempting Justice: Precrime In Fiction And In Fact, Mark Niles

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

United Nations Collective Security And The United States Security Guarantee In An Age Of Rising Multipolarity: The Security Council As The Talking Shop Of The Nations, Kenneth Anderson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This essay considers the respective roles of the United Nations and the United States in a world of rising multipolarity and rising new (or old) Great Powers. It asks why UN collective security as a concept persists, despite the well-known failures, both practical and theoretical, and why it remains anchored to the UN Security Council. The persistence is owed, according to the essay, to the fact of a parallel US security guarantee that offers much of the world (in descending degrees starting with NATO and close US allies such as Japan, but even extending to non-allies and even enemies who …

U.S. Counterterrorism Policy And Superpower Compliance With International Human Rights Norms, Kenneth Anderson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This essay, originally prepared for a symposium on Guantanamo and international law, provides an brief overview of the elements that a comprehensive US counterterrorism should encompass. This overview is set against the question of how the US, as the world's superpower, ought to address its international law obligations. The essay then sets that question against the still-further question of what it means to be the superpower in a world that some believe is gradually evolving into a multipolar world, but which is currently a world of a conjoined US-international global system of security.

The essay defends the concept of counterterrorism …

The State Secrets Privilege And Separation Of Powers, Amanda Frost

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has repeatedly invoked the state secrets privilege in cases challenging executive conduct in the war on terror, arguing that the very subject matter of these cases must be kept secret to protect national security. The executive's recent assertion of the privilege is unusual, in that it is seeking dismissal, pre-discovery, of all challenges to the legality of specific executive branch programs, rather than asking for limits on discovery in individual cases. This essay contends that the executive's assertion of the privilege is therefore akin to a claim that the courts lack jurisdiction to …

After Action Review (Aar) Of Attendance At The Brazilian Army Command And General Staff College, Gary Corn

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In 2005, I was the first member of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAG Corps) to attend a foreign command and general staff college (CGSC). This article provides a summary of my attendance at the Brazilian Army's Command and General Staff College-Escola de Comando e Estado Maior do Extrcito (ECEME). Through a unique series of events, I was selected and attended the Brazilian Army's ECEME, a ten-month CGSC equivalent, where I studied brigade and division-level operations through the lens of a foreign military. This rare opportunity not only afforded me a unique and valuable professional development experience, it …

On The Hijacking Of Agencies (And Airplanes): The Federal Aviation Administration, Agency Capture, And Airline Security, Mark Niles

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.