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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Theory And Practice At The Intersection Between Human Rights And Humanitarian Law, Monica Hakimi Jan 2018

The Theory And Practice At The Intersection Between Human Rights And Humanitarian Law, Monica Hakimi

Faculty Scholarship

The United States is more than fifteen years into a fight against terrorism that shows no sign of abating and, with the change in administration, appears to be intensifying. Other Western democracies that have historically been uneasy about U.S. counterterrorism policies have, in recent years, shifted toward those policies. And armed nonstate groups continue to commit large-scale acts of violence in multiple distinct theaters. The legal issues that these situations present are not entirely new, but neither are they going away. Recent publications, like the three works under review, thus provide useful opportunities to reflect on and refine our thinking …


Three Arguments About War, Robert L. Tsai Jan 2015

Three Arguments About War, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

The rise of the United States as a military power capable of mounting global warfare and subduing domestic rebellions has helped produce a corresponding shift in the language of liberal constitutionalism. Arguments invoking war have become prevalent, increasingly creative and far-reaching, and therefore an emerging threat to rule of law values. It is not only legal limits on the capacity to wage war that have been influenced by the ascendance of war-inspired discourse; seemingly unrelated areas of law have also been reshaped by talk of war, from the constitutional rules of criminal procedure to the promise of racial and sexual …


Taking Stock Ten Years In: Coin, Casualties, And Costs In The Long War - An Introduction, Robert D. Sloane Jan 2012

Taking Stock Ten Years In: Coin, Casualties, And Costs In The Long War - An Introduction, Robert D. Sloane

Faculty Scholarship

On October 7, 2001, almost exactly a decade prior to the date of the conference from which the following symposium contributions derive, former President George W. Bush ordered airstrikes on Kabul and Kandahar,' inaugurating hostilities in what has become the longest war in U.S. history. By early December 2001, the Taliban had lost effective control over any significant part of Afghanistan's territory and with it any plausible claim to represent Afghanistan's government under traditional principles of international law.2 President Bush formally declared victory on June 15, 2004, during a speech in which he praised Afghanistan's interim leader and now President …


A Functional Approach To Targeting And Detention, Monica Hakimi Jan 2012

A Functional Approach To Targeting And Detention, Monica Hakimi

Faculty Scholarship

The international law governing when states may target to kill or preventively detain nonstate actors is in disarray. This Article puts much of the blame on the method that international law uses to answer that question. The method establishes different standards in four regulatory domains: (1) law enforcement, (2) emergency, (3) armed conflict for civilians, and (4) armed conflict for combatants. Because the legal standards vary, so too may substantive outcomes; decisionmakers must select the correct domain before determining whether targeting or detention is lawful. This Article argues that the "domain method" is practically unworkable and theoretically dubious. Practically, the …


Untangling Belligerency From Neutrality In The Conflict With Al-Qaeda, Rebecca Ingber Oct 2011

Untangling Belligerency From Neutrality In The Conflict With Al-Qaeda, Rebecca Ingber

Faculty Scholarship

The legal architecture for the conflict with al-Qaeda and the Taliban has been the subject of extensive scrutiny through two presidential administrations, a decade of litigation, and multiple acts of Congress. All three branches of the federal government have to date defined the framework as one of armed conflict, and have looked to the laws of war as support for expansive authorities concerning the use of force, including detention. Yet the laws of war do not merely contemplate broad state authority; they also provide critical and non-derogable constraints on that authority. Nevertheless considerable debate rages on with respect to whether …


No Virtue In Passivity: The Supreme Court And Ali Al-Marri, Bruce K. Miller Jan 2011

No Virtue In Passivity: The Supreme Court And Ali Al-Marri, Bruce K. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

This Article discusses the case of Al-Marri v. Spagone, which the U.S. Supreme Court unjustifiably dismissed as moot on March 6, 2009. By dismissing this appeal, the Court ignored its duty to determine whether the military detention of a non-citizen residing lawfully in the United States was authorized by law. And that failure has in turn contributed significantly, and unnecessarily, to the cloud of legal uncertainty which now hovers over the preventive detention measures adopted and proposed by the Obama Administration.


The Structure Of Terrorism Threats And The Laws Of War, Matthew C. Waxman Jan 2010

The Structure Of Terrorism Threats And The Laws Of War, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

This article considers a major debate in the American and European counterterrorism analytic community – whether the primary terrorist threat to the West is posed by hierarchical, centralized terrorist organizations operating from geographic safe havens, or by radicalized individuals conducting a loosely organized, ideologically common but operationally independent fight against western societies – and this debate’s implications for both jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Analysis of how the law of armed conflict might be evolving to deal with terrorism should engage in more nuanced and sophisticated examination of how terrorism threats are themselves evolving. Moreover, the merits of …


Are We Over-Lawyering International Affairs, Philip C. Bobbitt, John D. Hutson, John C. Yoo, Philip D. Zelikow, Edwin D. Williamson Jan 2008

Are We Over-Lawyering International Affairs, Philip C. Bobbitt, John D. Hutson, John C. Yoo, Philip D. Zelikow, Edwin D. Williamson

Faculty Scholarship

This panel will discuss the role of lawyers — particularly government lawyers — in addressing questions of legal policy. We will discuss fundamental questions such as: Should lawyers decide legal policy? Or, is that best left to the policymakers? Should lawyers give advice as to legal policy, or should they stick to providing answers as to what the law is? How should lawyers respond to what a policymaker thinks is the legal question, but is really a question of legal policy? If lawyers find the law vague or lacking, should they fill in the gaps, advising as to what the …


International Standards For Detaining Terrorism Suspects: Moving Beyond The Armed Conflict-Criminal Divide, Monica Hakimi Jan 2008

International Standards For Detaining Terrorism Suspects: Moving Beyond The Armed Conflict-Criminal Divide, Monica Hakimi

Faculty Scholarship

Although sometimes described as war, the fight against transnational jihadi groups (referred to for shorthand as the "fight against terrorism") largely takes place away from any recognizable battlefield. Terrorism suspects are captured in houses, on street comers, and at border crossings around the globe. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the high-level Qaeda operative who planned the September 11 attacks, was captured by the Pakistani government in a residence in Pakistan. Abu Omar, a radical Muslim imam, was apparently abducted by U.S. and Italian agents off the streets of Milan. And Abu Baker Bashir, the spiritual leader of the Qaeda-affiliated group responsible for …