Law Commons^™

Afghanistan, Greg Sanders

Human Rights & Human Welfare

After September 11, Afghanistan became the first battleground of the War on Terror when the Taliban government refused to turn over Osama Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda members. Human rights concerns about these events fall in two areas. First, did the United States violate human rights when it launched Operation Enduring Freedom to overthrow the Taliban and during the subsequent occupation? Second, have the occupation forces and new regime of under the leadership of Hamid Karzai done enough to improve the previously miserable human rights situation in Afghanistan?

The Usa Patriot Act, Toni Panetta

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The events of September 11, 2001 serve as the origin of the United States’ War on Terror as popularized by the Bush administration. Previously, American strategies to combat terrorism focused on attacks against its interests abroad, and support for other governments’ efforts to curb terrorist acts within their own boundaries. However, September 11 revealed vulnerability to violence by non-state actors within U.S. borders. In response, the United States reshaped its anti-terrorist strategies to prevent future attacks by targeting terrorists, foreign and domestic, known and potential.

Civil Aircraft As Weapons Of Large-Scale Destruction: Countermeasures, Article 3bis Of The Chicago Convention, And The Newly Adopted German "Luftsicherheitsgesetz", Robin Geiß

Michigan Journal of International Law

It is thus the aim of this Article to map out the international legal framework relevant for designing countermeasures against nonstate actors who convert civil aircraft into weapons of destruction. As a first step, this Article sketches out the applicable rules relating to international civil aviation security and highlights the dichotomy between nonstate actor threats and interstate threats at the base of these rules. As will be seen below, nonstate actors abusing civil aircraft as weapons of destruction is a new challenge not only in terms of destructive quality but also in a legal sense, in that the question of …

The Executive's Scapegoat, The Court's Blind Eye? Immigrants' Rights After September 11, Hollis V. Pfitsch

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

"Can I See Your Papers?" Local Police Enforcement Of Federal Immigration Law Post 9/11 And Asian American Permanent Foreignness, Mohar Ray

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Leveling The Playing Field: A New Theory Of Exclusion For A Post-Patriot Act America, Christian Halliburton

Faculty Articles

This article takes the position that, although the PATRIOT Act is superficially unrelated to the specifics of the exclusionary rule, such a drastic departure from constitutional norms would not have been possible had the Court not conditioned the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule's operation on pursuit of the inherently unstable target of institutional deterrence. Part I of this article will trace the development of the Fourth Amendment's exclusionary rule from its origins in federal court through its incorporation against the states, paying particular attention to the underlying purpose of the exclusionary rule as announced by the Court, and concluding with a …

Private Military Contractor Liability And Accountability After Abu Ghraib, 38 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1237 (2005), Mark W. Bina

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Optrex And The Attorney-Client Privilege: Implications And Potential Significance, 39 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1 (2005), Sandra Liss Friedman, Helena D. Sullivan

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

The "Lone Wolf" Amendment And The Future Of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Law, Patricia E. Simone, Patricia L. Bellia

Journal Articles

In December 2004, Congress adopted an important change to the statutory framework authorizing domestic surveillance of foreign powers and their agents, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The change, directly prompted by the events of September 11, 2001, makes it easier for the government to conduct surveillance of so-called lone wolf terrorists - that is, terrorists who act in sympathy with the aims of an international terrorist group but not on its behalf, or terrorists whose link to an international terrorist group cannot be demonstrated.

Although the logic of the lone wolf amendment at first seems quite compelling, the amendment …

Guantanamo And The Conflict Of Laws: Rasul And Beyond, Kermit Roosevelt Iii

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Fourth Amendment And Terrorism, John Burkoff

Articles

The important questions we need to ask and to answer B in the perilous times in which we live B is whether the Fourth Amendment applies in the same fashion not just to run of the mill criminals, but also to terrorists and suspected terrorists, individuals who are committing or who have committed B or who may be poised to commit B acts aimed at the destruction of extremely large numbers of people? Professor Burkoff argues that we can protect ourselves from cataclysmic threats of this sort and still maintain a fair and objective application of Fourth Amendment doctrine that …

Re-Membering Law In The Internationalizing World, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

This article examines some of the challenges to understanding new, non-national legal configurations as contexts of origin color understandings and evaluations of legal standards allegedly shared across legal communities. It examines a case on assisted suicide, Pretty v. U.K., decided by the European Court of Human Rights. The case illustrates mechanisms of legal integration in the European court, followed by a process of dis-integration that occurred when the decision was reported to the French legal community. The French rendition reflected a legal community's inability to process common law information through civil law cognitive grids. The article addresses both the capacity …

Beyond The "War" On Terrorism: Towards The New Intelligence Network, Ronald D. Lee, Paul M. Schwartz

Michigan Law Review

In Terrorism, Freedom, and Security, Philip B. Heymann undertakes a wide-ranging study of how the United States can - and in his view should - respond to the threat of international terrorism. A former Deputy Attorney General of the United States Department of Justice ("DOJ") and current James Barr Ames Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, Heymann draws on his governmental experience and jurisprudential background in developing a series of nuanced approaches to preventing terrorism. Heymann makes clear his own policy and legal preferences. First, as his choice of subtitle suggests, he firmly rejects the widely used metaphor …

A New Framework: Post-Kyoto Energy And Environmental Security, Lakshman D. Guruswamy

Publications

In this article Professor Guruswamy advances an argument for new energy agreements that address the immense global environmental challenge presented by the increasing global energy demands of both the developed and developing world. Arguing that new energy accords are needed to meet this challenge, he identifies and describes the decidedly interdisciplinary knowledge base and analytics required to negotiate such international instruments. The construction of these knowledge bases call for scientific, engineering, technological, legal, social, economic and behavioral expertise. Professor Guruswamy identifies pragmatic steps--including a targeted research agenda--that will contribute to such an undertaking and begin the arduous process of addressing …

Sustainable Energy: A Preliminary Framework, Lakshman Guruswamy

Publications

No abstract provided.

Energy, Environment & Sustainable Development, Lakshman D. Guruswamy

Publications

No abstract provided.

Hamdi Meets Youngstown: Justice Jackson's Wartime Security Jurisprudence And The Detention Of Enemy Combatants, Sarah H. Cleveland

Faculty Scholarship

More than any Justice who has sat on the United States Supreme Court, Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson explained how our Eighteenth Century Constitution – that "Eighteenth-Century sketch of a government hoped for" – struggles both to preserve fundamental liberties and to protect the nation against fundamental threats. Drawing upon his collective experience as a solo practitioner with only one year of formal legal education at Albany Law School; government tax and antitrust lawyer, Solicitor General, and Attorney General in the Roosevelt Administration; Associate Justice to the Supreme Court; and Representative and Chief of Counsel for the United States at …

The Mosaic Theory, National Security, And The Freedom Of Information Act, David E. Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

This Note documents the evolution of the "mosaic theory" in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) national security law and highlights its centrality in the post-9/11 landscape of information control. After years of doctrinal stasis and practical anonymity, federal agencies began asserting the theory more aggressively after 9/11, thereby testing the limits of executive secrecy and of judicial deference. Though essentially valid, the mosaic theory has been applied in ways that are unfalsifiable, in tension with the text and purpose of FOIA, and susceptible to abuse and overbreadth. This Note therefore argues, against precedent, for greater judicial scrutiny of mosaic theory …

Protecting Rights In The Age Of Terrorism: Challenges And Opportunities, Rosa Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Depending on whom you speak to these days (and the mood in which you find them), international law is either practically moribund, or it's more vibrant and important than it has been for years. To take the good news story first, international law issues have been at the forefront of public discourse over the past few years. Pick your issue: the U.N. Charter and the international law on the use of force? The Convention Against Torture? The Geneva Conventions? You'll find it on the front page these days. Journalists are phoning international law professors for background briefings, and students are …

The Politics Of The Geneva Conventions: Avoiding Formalist Traps, Rosa Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Geneva Conventions were drafted in 1949, in another world. The world of the Geneva Conventions' "framers" is still familiar to all of us, though increasingly it is familiar from movies and books rather from the evening news or, still less, our own lived experience. The world in which the Conventions were drafted was a world of states: powerful states, weak states, predatory states, law-abiding states, but states all the same. Soldiers wore uniforms designed by their states, carried weapons issued by their states, obeyed orders given by their commanders, and fought against the armies of other states.

Well--most of …

Terrorist Speech And The Future Of Free Expression, Laura K. Donohue

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The crucial point is this: Both liberal, democratic states, and non-state terrorist organizations need free speech. Prominent scholars have written elegantly and at length on the role of this liberty for the former. While their arguments surface at times in the text, the author does not dwell on them. Instead, she wrestles with the question: Under what circumstances are the interests of the state secured and the opportunism of terrorist organizations avoided? Here, the experiences of the United States and United Kingdom prove instructive. On both sides of the Atlantic, where the state acts as sovereign, efforts to restrict persuasive …

Return Of The Great Writ: Judicial Review, Due Process, And The Detention Of Alleged Terrorists As Enemy Combatants, Benjamin Priester

Journal Publications

The federal government's reaction to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, included a wide range of statutes, policies, and strategies for aggressively pursuing, capturing, detaining, and punishing not only the individuals directly responsible for the attacks, but also those who seek to carry out future attacks. The objective was no less ambitious than the elimination of the entire terrorist organization known as Al Qaeda, from its leaders like Osama bin Laden to its agents in the field. To accomplish this aim the government invoked the full range of its powers in foreign and domestic affairs: military force abroad, foreign …

Legislative Responses To Terrorism: A View From Britain, Geoffrey Bennett

Journal Articles

There is nothing new in the United Kingdom about either the threat of terrorism or a legal response to it. For almost one hundred and fifty years, the troubled spectre of Irish politics has haunted mainland Britain and produced a variety of reactions, some worth noting and others richly deserving oblivion. In surveying the legislation it is important to bear in mind that the events of September 11, 2001 did not immediately bring about any dramatic change in the legislation directed to anti-terrorism. Most of it was already there. Having said that, the events of 9/11 have certainly had an …

Legal "Black Hole"? Extraterritorial State Action And International Treaty Law On Civil And Political Rights, Ralph Wilde

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article considers the significant role that extraterritorial activity is playing in the post-9/11 foreign policy of some States and the idea that this activity somehow takes place "outside" the law or, at least, outside an arena where legal norms apply as a matter of course rather than only when and to the extent that the State involved decides these norms will apply. It begins in Section II by mapping out the extraterritorial state activities conducted since 9/11, covering activities with a personalized object-such as the military action taken in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda-and activities with a spatial (territorial) object-such …

Be Reasonable! Thoughts On The Effectiveness Of State Criticism In Enforcing International Law, Michael Y. Kieval

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Note examines the effectiveness of diplomatic criticism in enforcing international law, particularly in the counter-terrorism (or anti-insurgency) context. It is not concerned with determining what international law does or does not "in fact" allow States to do in combating terrorism and other existential threats.

Article 9 Of The Constitution Of Japan And The Use Of Procedural And Substantive Heuristics For Consensus, Mark A. Chinen

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article’s purpose is to examine the revision debates through the lens of recent scholarship on constitutional decisionmaking to see what lessons might be drawn about constitutionalism in Japan and elsewhere. In Part I, the author discusses Article 9's text and interpretation and focus on three controversies: first, Japan's ability to use force to defend itself and the related issue of the constitutionality of the Japan Self Defense Force (SDF); second, Japan's ability to engage in collective self-defense, which impacts the state's security relationship with the United States under the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Agreement; and finally, Japan's ability to participate …

Tangled Up In Khaki And Blue: Lethal And Non-Lethal Weapons In Recent Confrontations, David A. Koplow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Too often, military and law enforcement authorities have found themselves constrained by inadequate weaponry: the tools available to them, in addressing confrontations with entrenched opponents of various sorts, are either too weak (not sufficing to disarm or defeat the enemy) or too strong (generating unacceptable "collateral damage" in harming innocent people or property). An emerging category of "non-lethal weapons" carries promise for resolving this dilemma, proffering deft new capabilities for disabling, dissuading, or defeating opponents without inflicting death or permanent injury.

Some primitive non-lethal weapons (such as truncheons, tear gas, and water cannon) have long been staples in the inventories …

Law And War: Individual Rights, Executive Authority, And Judicial Power In England During World War I , Rachel Vorspan

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the role of the English courts during World War I, particularly the judicial response to executive infringements on individual liberty. Focusing on the areas of detention, deportation, conscription, and confiscation of property, the Article revises the conventional depiction of the English judiciary during World War I as passive and peripheral. It argues that in four ways the judges were activist and energetic, both in advancing the government's war effort and in promoting their own policies and powers. First, they were judicial warriors, developing innovative legal strategies to legitimize detention and other governmental restrictions on personal. Second, they …

Terror And Race, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The United States is now engaged in an internationally prominent war on terror. That war, however, is being waged in a way that threatens to cause the same types of harm to the democratic values of the United States that the Nation's terrorist enemies are hoping to inflict. Foreign terrorists are attempting to undermine the fundamental liberties that United States culture claims to hold dear. But those are the same liberties that our own government has asked us to forego in its effort to win the war on terror. The paradoxical irony entailed in the United States government's demand that …

Rasul V. Bush: Unanswered Questions, Randolph N. Jonakait

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.