Law Commons^™

The Trickle-Down War, Rosa Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The history of the European nation-state, wrote political sociologist Charles Tilly, is inextricably bound up with the history of warfare. To oversimplify Tilly’s nuanced and complex arguments, the story goes something like this: As power-holders (originally bandits and local strongmen) sought to expand their power, they needed capital to pay for weapons, soldiers and supplies. The need for capital and new recruits drove the creation of taxation systems and census mechanisms, and the need for more effective systems of taxation and recruitment necessitated better roads, better communications and better record keeping. This in turn enabled the creation of larger and …

Drones And Cognitive Dissonance, Rosa Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There’s something about drones that makes sane people crazy. Is it those lean, futurist profiles? The activities drone technologies enable? Or perhaps it’s just the word itself–drone–a mindless, unpleasant, dissonant thrum. Whatever the cause, drones seem to produce an unusual kind of cognitive dissonance in many people.

Some demonize drones, denouncing them for causing civilian deaths or enabling long-distance killing, even as they ignore the fact that the same (or worse) could be said of many other weapons delivery systems. Others glorify them as a low-cost way to “take out terrorists,” despite the strategic vacuum in which most …

The Taint Of Torture: The Roles Of Law And Policy In Our Descent To The Dark Side, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Was the Bush administration’s decision to employ “enhanced interrogation techniques” a mistake of policy, a violation of law, or both? This essay responds to Philip Zelikow’s insider account of how the decision to use these techniques was reached. The author suggests that while Zelikow makes a strong case that the decision to authorize the CIA to use coercive interrogation tactics was a mistaken policy judgment, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that it was also illegal. The latter conclusion demands a different response than the former. In particular, it underscores the necessity for accountability. The author …

Out Of The Shadows: Preventive Detention, Suspected Terrorists, And War, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article examines the appropriate and inappropriate role of "preventive detention" in responding to terrorist threats. It offers a constitutional jurisprudence of preventive detention, maintaining that absent a showing that dangerous behaviour cannot be addressed through criminal prosecution, preventive detention is unconstitutional. But criminal prosecution is not always a realistic option, and in those circumstances, preventive detention, carefully circumscribed and meticulously safeguarded by procedural protections, may be permissible. Familiar examples of accepted preventive detention regimes include civil commitment of dangerous persons who because of a mental disability cannot be held criminally responsible, and detention of enemy soldiers in a traditional …

The Twenty Year Test: Principles For An Enduring Counterterrorism Legal Architecture, James E. Baker

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The United States faces three enduring terrorism-related threats. First, there is the realistic prospect of additional attacks in the United States including attacks using weapons of mass destruction (“WMD”). Second, in responding to this threat, we may undermine the freedoms that enrich our lives, the tolerance that marks our society, and the democratic values that define our government. Third, if we are too focused on terrorism, we risk losing sight of this century’s other certain threats as well as the capacity to respond to them, including the state proliferation of nuclear weapons, nation-state rivalry, pandemic disease, oil dependency, and environmental …

Less Safe, Less Free: A Progress Report On The War On Terror: Address To The Terrorism & Justice Conference At The University Of Central Missouri, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Bush Administration since 9-11 has adopted a strategy, which in some sense depends upon the ability to predict with incredible accuracy at what will happen in the future. It was given its name by the U.S. Attorney General during the first Bush Administration, Missouri’s John Ashcroft, who argued that what we need in the wake of 9-11 is a “preventive paradigm.” The argument is understandable: when facing foes who are willing to commit suicide in order to inflict mass casualties on innocent civilians, it is not enough to bring them to justice after the fact. The perpetrators are dead--and …

What’S International Law Got To Do With It? Transnational Law And The Intelligence Mission, James E. Baker

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The United States faces an immediate and continuous threat of terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. The intelligence function and national security law, including international law--or more accurately transnational law--are central to addressing this threat. Indeed, international law is more relevant today in addressing this threat than it was before September 11. Part II of this article describes a continuum of contemporary threats to U.S. national security, with a focus on nonstate terrorism. Part III addresses the role of intelligence and national security law, and in particular law addressed to process, in combating these threats. Part …

Anglo-American Privacy And Surveillance, Laura K. Donohue

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The United States’ Terrorism Surveillance Program represents just one of many expansions in surveillance since 9/11, as legal controls previously introduced to protect citizens’ privacy and to prevent the misuse of surveillance powers have been relaxed. What makes the situation qualitatively different now is not just the lowering of the bar: digitization and the rapid advancement of technology mean that the type and volume of information currently available eclipse that of previous generations. The issue is not confined to the United States. Despite the incorporation of the European Convention of Human Rights into British law, the United Kingdom also appears …

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 …

War Everywhere: Rights, National Security Law, And The Law Of Armed Conflict In The Age Of Terror, Rosa Ehrenreich Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Both international and domestic law take as a basic premise the notion that it is possible, important, and usually fairly straightforward to distinguish between war and peace, emergencies and normality, the foreign and the domestic, the external and the internal. From an international law perspective, the law of armed conflict is triggered only when a armed conflict actually exists; the rest of the time, other bodies of law are applicable. Domestically, U.S. courts have developed a constitutional and statutory jurisprudence that distinguishes between national security issues and domestic questions, with the courts subjecting government actions to far less scrutiny when …

Lbj's Ghost: A Contextual Approach To Targeting Decisions And The Commander In Chief, James E. Baker

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The moral imperative and relevance of the Law of Armed Conflict (“LOAC”) is more apparent today than before September 11, 2001. Law distinguishes democratic societies from the terrorists who attack them; nowhere is this more apparent than in the methods and means of warfare. Indeed, part of our revulsion and contempt for terrorism lies in the terrorists' indiscriminate, disproportionate, and unnecessary violence against civilians. In contrast, the enduring strength of the LOAC is its reliance on the principles of proportionality, necessity, and discrimination, which protect civilians and minimize combatant suffering. For these reasons, we should not begrudge the LOAC's limitations …

The Constitutional Duty Of A National Security Lawyer In A Time Of Terror, James E. Baker

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

National security lawyers are probably not in the forefront of the public’s mind when one refers to government lawyers, but they serve a vital mission within the public sector. This article explores the duties and responsibilities inherent in that mission, and discusses the continuing role of the national security lawyer after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001.

Ordered Liberty And The Homeland Security Mission, James E. Baker

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper will start with a brief discussion of the terrorism threat because the threat remains predicate for any serious discussion of where we draw our legal lines. I will then suggest a legal model for looking at questions of homeland security called ordered liberty. The model is simple. First, given the nature of the threat, the executive must have broad and flexible authority to detect and respond to terrorism-–to provide for our physical security. Second, the sine qua non for such authority is meaningful oversight. Oversight means the considered application of constitutional structure, executive process, legal substance, and relevant …

When Lawyers Advise Presidents In Wartime: Kosovo And The Law Of Armed Conflict, James E. Baker

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The events of September 11 changed how we perceive national security as a society, a government, and as individuals. This is as true of national security specialists, who have been aware that America has been at war with terrorism sine at least the 1990s, as it is for those whose sense of geographic security was shattered in New York and Washington. There is talk of “new war” and “new rules,” and concern that we not apply twentieth-century lessons to a twenty-first-century war.

Over time, September 11 and its aftermath will test our interpretation and application of domestic law. It may …