Law Commons^™

Banning Autonomous Killing, Mary O'Connell

Mary Ellen O'Connell

Scientific research on fully autonomous weapons systems is moving rapidly. At the current pace of discovery, such fully autonomous systems will be available to military arsenals within a few decades, if not a few years. These systems operate through computer programs that will both select and attack a target without human involvement after the program is activated. Looking to the law governing resort to military force, to relevant ethical considerations, as well as the practical experience of ten years of killing using unmanned systems (drones), the time is ripe to discuss a major multilateral treaty banning fully autonomous killing. Current …

The World’S Youngest Political Prisoner, Richard Klein

Richard Daniel Klein

Every participant at an international human rights conference in June 1998 received a small pamphlet published by Tibetan supporters of Tibetan Buddhism's highest-ranking figure, the Dalai Lama. Entitled "The World's Youngest Political Prisoner," the pamphlet makes a plea for support for a young boy, now nine years old, who the Chinese government has allegedly kidnapped and detained. The Dalai Lama, who has been living in exile for forty years, claims the boy is the eleventh reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, the second holiest individual in Tibetan Buddhism. This battle over the identification of the reincarnation of a holy man is …

Us Intelligence Assets In Mexico Reportedly Tied To Murdered Dea Agent, Jimmy Gurule

Jimmy Gurule

Jimmy Gurule’ was quoted in the FoxNews story US intelligence assets in Mexico reportedly tied to murdered DEA agent By William La Jeunesse, Lee Ross "I think the American people, at least, owe him for the sacrifice that he made to ensure that the people that took his life, that subjected him to torture over a three day period of time are held accountable and brought to justice, says Jimmy Gurule’, the former Assistant U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles. "I'm deeply disappointed about a lot of things," Gurule’ told Fox News. "But we're talking about the release of the murderer …

Global Warming Trend? The Creeping Indulgence Of Fair Use In International Copyright Law, Richard Peltz-Steele

Richard J. Peltz-Steele

In her article Toward an International Fair Use Doctrine in 2000, Professor Ruth Okediji hypothesized that the internationalization of copyright law would threaten the freedom of expression if some doctrine akin to U.S. “fair use” were not established as an international legal norm. Acknowledging the central concern of the Okediji article, this paper analyzes research and legal developments since that article to determine how the present state of the “fair use” concept in international copyright law differs from its state in 2000. The paper concludes that in the last eight years, though there has been no formal adoption of an …

“Germans Are The Lords And Poles Are The Servants”: The Trial Of Arthur Greiser In Poland, 1946, Mark Drumbl

Mark A. Drumbl

No abstract provided.

Reforming Surveillance Law: The Swiss Model., Susan Freiwald, Sylvain Méille

Susan Freiwald

As implemented over the past twenty-seven years, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (“ECPA”), which regulates electronic surveillance by law enforcement agents, has become incomplete, confusing, and ineffective. In contrast, a new Swiss law, CrimPC, regulates law enforcement surveillance in a more comprehensive, uniform, and effective manner. This Article compares the two approaches and argues that recent proposals to reform ECPA in a piecemeal fashion will not suffice. Instead, Swiss CrimPC presents a model for more fundamental reform of U.S. law.

This Article is the first to analyze the Swiss law with international eyes and demonstrate its advantages over the U.S. …