Law Commons^™

Hackback: Permitting Retaliatory Hacking By Non-State Actors As Proportionate Countermeasures To Transboundary Cyberharm, Jan E. Messerschmidt

National Security Law Program

Cyberespionage has received even greater attention in the wake of reports of persistent and brazen cyberexploitation of U.S. and Canadian firms by the Chinese military. But the recent disclosures about NSA surveillance programs have made clear that a national program of cyberdefense of private firms' intellectual property is politically infeasible. Following the lead

of companies like Google, private corporations may increasingly resort to the use of self-defense, hacking back against cross-border incursions on the Internet. Most scholarship, however, has surprisingly viewed such actions as outside the ambit of international law. This Note provides a novel account of how international law …

Changing Tides: An Adaptable Prosecution Approach To Piracy’S Shifting Problem, Jessica Piquet

National Security Law Program

Although piracy off the coast of Somalia has captured worldwide attention, attacks in this region are decreasing while other regions are experiencing increases in pirate activity. This Note expands upon prior research into prosecution models for combatting piracy off the coast of Somalia to determine the adaptability and sustainability of these methods as applied to piracy in other regions. In examining the three most common prosecution models currently used and proposed (prosecution by domestic courts in regional states, prosecution by the capturing state or by a state with a significant nexus to the attack, and prosecution by a specialized piracy …

The Kiobel Presumption And Extraterritoriality, Sarah H. Cleveland

Faculty Scholarship

With its modem rebirth in Filartiga v. Pena-Irala, the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) held out a potentially transformative promise. By establishing a forum in the United States for a victim of torture that had occurred at the hands of a Paraguayan police inspector in Paraguay, the ATS offered to emancipate the state-centered Westphalian system from a narrow focus on territorial sovereignty, and move toward a more globalized community focused on the protection of universal values. The ATS recognized that modem human rights perpetrators, victims, and violations move easily across borders, and that transnational accountability for such violations is in the …