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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Proportionality Rule And Mental Health Harm In War, Sarah Knuckey, Alex Moorehead, Audrey Mccalley, Adam Brown
The Proportionality Rule And Mental Health Harm In War, Sarah Knuckey, Alex Moorehead, Audrey Mccalley, Adam Brown
Faculty Scholarship
The foundational international humanitarian law rule of proportionality — that parties to an armed conflict may not attack where civilian harm would be excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage — is normally interpreted to encompass civilian physical injuries only. Attacks may cause significant mental harms also, yet current interpretations of the law lag behind science in understanding and recognizing these kinds of harms. This article analyzes legal, public health, psychology, and neuroscience research to assess the extent to which mental health harms should and could be taken into account in proportionality assessments.
Debating Autonomous Weapon Systems, Their Ethics, And Their Regulation Under International Law, Kenneth Anderson, Matthew C. Waxman
Debating Autonomous Weapon Systems, Their Ethics, And Their Regulation Under International Law, Kenneth Anderson, Matthew C. Waxman
Faculty Scholarship
An international public debate over the law and ethics of autonomous weapon systems (AWS) has been underway since 2012, with those urging legal regulation of AWS under existing principles and requirements of the international law of armed conflict, on the one side, in argument with opponents who favor, instead, a preemptive international treaty ban on all such weapons, on the other. This Chapter provides an introduction to this international debate, offering the main arguments on each side. These include disputes over defining an AWS, the morality and law of automated targeting and target selection by machine, and the interaction of …
A Functional Approach To Targeting And Detention, Monica Hakimi
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 …
Agora: Icj Advisory Opinion On Construction Of A Wall In The Occupied Palestinian Territory: Editors' Introduction, Lori Fisler Damrosch, Bernard H. Oxman
Agora: Icj Advisory Opinion On Construction Of A Wall In The Occupied Palestinian Territory: Editors' Introduction, Lori Fisler Damrosch, Bernard H. Oxman
Faculty Scholarship
Only rarely does an international judicial opinion attract attention on the front pages of newspapers around the world, and spur activism-or condemnation-from diverse segments of global civil society. The advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is such a case. As the Court recognized in addressing the question put to it by the United Nations General Assembly, the choice of the term "wall" to designate the subject matter of the proceeding already opens up an area of debate, since not all of the contested structure is …
Interpreting U.S. Treaties In Light Of Human Rights Values, Lori Fisler Damrosch
Interpreting U.S. Treaties In Light Of Human Rights Values, Lori Fisler Damrosch
Faculty Scholarship
International treaty law occupies a more secure place in U.S. constitutional text than customary international law. Treaties, we know, are the “supreme law of the land” under Article VI of the Constitution and are routinely applied both in state courts and in federal courts under Article III. So the “awkward relationship” to which I will address myself is how U.S. courts should determine the meaning of an international treaty to which the United States is bound, when the parties involved in court have different views on the substance of the obligation that the United States has undertaken. Thus my general …