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Full-Text Articles in Law
Strengthening The Law Of Self-Defense After Bruen, Cynthia Lee
Strengthening The Law Of Self-Defense After Bruen, Cynthia Lee
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
On June 22, 2022, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, striking down New York’s over 100-year-old law requiring individuals seeking to carry a firearm concealed in public to show a special need for self-protection. Holding that New York’s law violated the Second Amendment, the Court rejected the means-end scrutiny that lower courts had previously used to determine whether firearms restrictions comported with the Second Amendment, explaining that the appropriate test for evaluating the constitutionality of a firearms restriction is whether it is consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical …
Firearms And Initial Aggressors, Cynthia Lee
Firearms And Initial Aggressors, Cynthia Lee
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Under the initial aggressor doctrine, an “initial aggressor” loses the right to claim self-defense. Until recently, judges, legal scholars, and others have paid relatively little attention to this doctrinal limitation on the defense of self-defense. Two high-profile criminal trials in 2021 put the initial aggressor doctrine front and center of the national conversation on issues concerning self-defense and racial justice. One involved Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old teenager who brought an AR-15 style rifle to Kenosha, Wisconsin during the third night of racial protests in August 2020, and ended up shooting three men, killing two and injuring the third. The other …
(E)Racing Trayvon Martin, Cynthia Lee
(E)Racing Trayvon Martin, Cynthia Lee
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
In this essay, Cynthia Lee celebrates the 25th anniversary of Critical Race Theory (CRT) by writing about the pitfalls of the ideal of colorblindness. She starts by analyzing Devon Carbado's seminal article on CRT and the Fourth Amendment, (E)Racing the Fourth Amendment. She focuses on Carbado's critique of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's embrace of colorblindness in Florida v. Bostick, the case in which the Supreme Court modified the test for a seizure of the person. Lee uses Carbado's article as a springboard for critiquing the embrace of colorblindness by legal decision-makers involved in George Zimmerman's 2013 murder trial. Zimmerman …
Making Race Salient: Trayvon Martin And Implicit Bias In A Not Yet Post-Racial Society, Cynthia Lee
Making Race Salient: Trayvon Martin And Implicit Bias In A Not Yet Post-Racial Society, Cynthia Lee
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This Article uses the Trayvon Martin shooting to examine the operation of implicit racial bias in cases involving self-defense claims. Judges and juries are often unaware that implicit racial bias can influence their perceptions of threat, danger, and suspicion in cases involving minority defendants and victims. Failure to recognize the effects of implicit racial bias is especially problematic in cases involving black male victims and claims of self-defense because such bias can make the defendant’s fear of the victim and his decision to use deadly force seem reasonable. The effects of implicit racial bias are particularly likely to operate under …
The International Legality Of U.S. Military Cross-Border Operations From Afghanistan Into Pakistan, Sean D. Murphy
The International Legality Of U.S. Military Cross-Border Operations From Afghanistan Into Pakistan, Sean D. Murphy
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
To date, U.S. cross-border operations from Afghanistan into Pakistan have taken three forms: the use of Predator drones to target Al Qaeda fighters (although such drones may be launched solely from within Pakistan); the "hot pursuit" of militants who engaged in raids from Pakistan against U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, as well as the Afghan government; and the deployment of special operations forces into Pakistan as a means of striking at Al Qaeda. These types of cross-border operations clearly implicate the jus ad bellum, in that they entail one state projecting highly coercive military force into another state. Arguably …
The Self-Defensive Cognition Of Self-Defense, Donald Braman, Dan M. Kahan
The Self-Defensive Cognition Of Self-Defense, Donald Braman, Dan M. Kahan
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Why do certain self-defense cases - ones, e.g., involving battered women who kill their sleeping abusers, or beleaguered commuters who shoot panhandling minority teens - provoke intense political conflict? The conventional and seemingly obvious answer is that people judge such cases in a politically partisan fashion. This paper, however, suggests a subtler and more complex explanation. Social psychologists have shown that individuals resolve factual ambiguities in a manner supportive of their defining values, both to minimize dissonance and to protect their connection to others who share their commitments. This form of self-defensive cognition, it is submitted, shapes individuals' perceptions of …
The Worldwide Popular Revolt Against Proportionality In Self-Defense Law, Renée Lettow Lerner
The Worldwide Popular Revolt Against Proportionality In Self-Defense Law, Renée Lettow Lerner
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This article examines popular dissatisfaction with the proportionality standard in self-defense law, which holds that the prevention of harm cannot be achieved by causing harm that is disproportionate. Legal elites, such as prosecutors, judges, and legal scholars, have long championed versions of this standard. But there is an increasingly widespread movement in the United States and Europe to modify elite notions of proportionality.
Common to these movements is the desire to replace complicated balancing tests with clearer rules, which would limit the discretion of prosecutors and judges, and to permit use of deadly force against attackers in more situations. Fueling …
How The United States Might Justify A Preemptive Strike On A Rogue Nation's Nuclear Weapon Development Facilities Under The U.N. Charter, Gregory E. Maggs
How The United States Might Justify A Preemptive Strike On A Rogue Nation's Nuclear Weapon Development Facilities Under The U.N. Charter, Gregory E. Maggs
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This essay addresses a legal question: "Under the United Nations Charter, how might the United States justify a preemptive strike on a rogue nation's nuclear weapon development facilities?" The essay answers this question by arguing that the United States would not have to rely on controversial theories like "self-defense in response to an imminent attack" or "anticipatory self-defense." On the contrary, as this essay demonstrates with numerous recent and widely-publicized examples, the nations that the United States most likely would strike, Iran and North Korea, constantly are engaging in conventional armed attacks and other aggression against allies of the United …
The Campaign To Restrict The Right To Respond To Terrorist Attacks In Self-Defense Under Article 51 Of The U.N. Charter And What The United States Can Do About It, Gregory E. Maggs
The Campaign To Restrict The Right To Respond To Terrorist Attacks In Self-Defense Under Article 51 Of The U.N. Charter And What The United States Can Do About It, Gregory E. Maggs
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Article 51 of the United Nations Charter preserves the right of nations to use military force in self-defense. This broad language would appear to allow nations to use military force in self-defense in response to "armed attacks" by terrorists. But a significant problem has developed over the past twenty years. In a series of resolutions and judicial decisions, organs of the United Nations have attempted to read into Article 51 four very significant and dangerous limitations on the use of military force in self-defense. These limitations find no support in the language of Article 51, they do not accord with …
Ipse Dixit At The I.C.J., Sean D. Murphy
Ipse Dixit At The I.C.J., Sean D. Murphy
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
No abstract provided.