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Full-Text Articles in Law

Exceptional Engagement: Protocol I And A World United Against Terrorism, Michael A. Newton Jan 2009

Exceptional Engagement: Protocol I And A World United Against Terrorism, Michael A. Newton

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article challenges the prevailing view that U.S. "exceptionalism" provides the strongest narrative for the U.S. rejection of Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The United States chose not to adopt the Protocol in the face of intensive international criticism because of its policy conclusions that the text contained overly expansive provisions resulting from politicized pressure to accord protection to terrorists who elected to conduct hostile military operations outside the established legal framework. The United States concluded that the commingling of the regime criminalizing terrorist acts with the jus in bello rules of humanitarian law would be untenable …


Some Observations On The Future Of U.S. Military Commissions, Michael A. Newton Jan 2009

Some Observations On The Future Of U.S. Military Commissions, Michael A. Newton

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The Obama Administration confronts many of the same practical and legal complexities that interagency experts debated in the fall of 2001. Military commissions remain a valid, if unwieldy, tool to be used at the discretion of a Commander-in-Chief. Refinement of the commission procedures has consumed thousands of legal hours within the Department of Defense, as well as a significant share of the Supreme Court docket. In practice, the military commissions have not been the charade of justice created by an overpowerful and unaccountable chief executive that critics predicted. In light of the permissive structure of U.S. statutes and the framework …


In The Sweat Box: A Historical Perspective On The Detention Of Material Witnesses, Carolyn B. Ramsey Jan 2009

In The Sweat Box: A Historical Perspective On The Detention Of Material Witnesses, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

After the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Justice Department detained scores of allegedly suspicious persons under a federal material witness statute--a tactic that provoked a great deal of controversy. Most critics assume that the abuse of material witness laws is a new development. Yet, rather than being transformed by the War on Terror, the detention of material witnesses is a coercive strategy that police officers across the nation have used since the nineteenth century to build cases against suspects. Fears of extraordinary violence or social breakdown played at most an indirect role in its advent and growth. Rather, it has …


Responses To The Ten Questions [On National Security Posed By The Journal Of National Security Forum Board Of Editors], Gregory E. Maggs Jan 2009

Responses To The Ten Questions [On National Security Posed By The Journal Of National Security Forum Board Of Editors], Gregory E. Maggs

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In 2009, the Journal of the National Security Forum Board of Editors posed ten questions on national security to a group of national-security law experts. Contributors were free to answer as many of the ten questions as they wished. All responses were published in a special issue of the William Mitchell Law Review. I answered the following three questions: 3. What are the lessons from detaining non-U.S. citizens, labeled enemy combatants, at Gitmo? 4. What is left for the Supreme Court to decide after the Boumediene decision? 10. What is the most important issue for American national security?

The SSRN …


Human Dignity, Humiliation, And Torture, David Luban Jan 2009

Human Dignity, Humiliation, And Torture, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Modern human rights instruments ground human rights in the concept of human dignity, without providing an underlying theory of human dignity. This paper examines the central importance of human dignity, understood as not humiliating people, in traditional Jewish ethics. It employs this conception of human dignity to examine and criticize U.S. use of humiliation tactics and torture in the interrogation of terrorism suspects.