Military, War, and Peace Commons^™

Too Many Cooks In The Kitchen: Examining The Major Obstacles To Achieving Peace In Syria's Civil War, Amanda Pitrof

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

The struggle for peace has been waged over and over, in numerous countries. Syria is no exception. It is a country with a history of violent conflict and political instability. The current regime is authoritarian to the extreme, and the range of competing religious interests is diverse. The civil war now consuming the country has claimed tens of thousands of lives, displaced millions, and thrown the country's future into question. This article will first briefly examine the country's turbulent history and the development of the current conflict. Next, it will evaluate previous attempts to solve the conflict. Then, it will …

Faroosh And Elina, Faroosh, Elina, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Faroosh was a cameraman for a private television program in Afghanistan working on a documentary about the Taliban. When he and his crew were discovered, the Taliban attacked them and he and his wife fled to Turkey, walking 12 hours to get there. Upon arrival the police arrested and harassed them. Turkey was not a safe place. After several suicide bombings in the area, they decided to move on to Greece, where they are in a refugee camp without any progress in their situation. They have no money to move forward and no ability to work and the economic situation …

An All-Volunteer Force: Law Students And Pro Bono Lawyers Helping Veterans, Patricia E. Roberts

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ambivalent Enforcement: International Humanitarian Law At Human Rights Tribunals, Shana Tabak

Michigan Journal of International Law

In addition to exploring the limitations of the Inter-American System’s jurisdictional capacity to adjudicate issues of IHL, this Article examines Inter-American jurisprudence in light of recent scholarly conversations regarding the relevance of the principle of lex specialis, which seeks to guide tribunals when two bodies of law may apply simultaneously, by providing for the prioritization of a specialized body of law over a general one. This concept, first articulated by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Nuclear Weapons case, has proven to be the source of much scholarly consternation. As a means of addressing problems arising from …

The Dance Of Delegitimation: Democratic Government And The Wars On Terror, Philip C. Bobbitt

Faculty Scholarship

It is pretty standard fare to argue that in fighting a successful war on terror, we shall have to compromise some of our values. And while this is not altogether correct, it is certainly more insightful and candid than the claims that really nothing needs to change which the very events of 9/11 and its aftermath decisively refute. Nevertheless, this standard claim is wrong, but because it is wrong in a subtle, habitual way, it takes some analysis to get right.

Why The Hurry To Regulate Autonomous Weapon Systems-But Not Cyber-Weapons?, Kenneth Anderson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Why Declarations Of War Matter, Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Wars Remembered (2003), Shaun O’Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

O'Connell speaks about his father, among other war veterans, dealing with the effects of the wars they fought in. He explains his father's history from how he enilisted to how he died. He also touches upon other's war experiences and writing about the after effects of them as well.

Reprinted from New England Journal of Public Policy 19, no. 1 (2003), article 3.

The War Powers Consultation Act: Keeping War Out Of The Zone Of Twilight, Brendan Flynn

Catholic University Law Review

The Constitution divides the war powers between Congress, which declares war, and the President, who serves as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Since the Korean War, the President has claimed increased authority to send the military into harm’s way without Congressional authorization. ­This Comment surveys the war powers issue through U.S. history and asserts that the President’s claim of increased authority has been enabled by Congressional abdication of its role, leading to­­ wars fought in a legal­­ “zone of twilight” in which Congress has neither authorized nor forbidden Presidential action (drawing on Justice Jackson’s famous tripartite analysis in his Youngstown …

Aumf Panel Transcript, Rosa Brooks, Benjamin Wittes

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Future As A Concept In National Security Law, Mary L. Dudziak

Pepperdine Law Review

With their focus on the future of national security law, the essays in this issue share a common premise: that the future matters to legal policy, and that law must take the future into account. But what is this future? And what conception of the future do national security lawyers have in mind? The future is, in an absolute sense, unknowable. Absent a time machine, we cannot directly experience it. Yet human action is premised on ideas about the future, political scientist Harold Lasswell wrote in his classic work The Garrison State. The ideas about the future that guide social …

Lost In Translation? The Relevancy Of Kobe Bryant And Aristotle To The Legality Of Modern Warfare, Rachel E. Vanlandingham

Pepperdine Law Review

What do Kobe Bryant, Aristotle, and the continuing U.S. response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, have in common? President Barack Obama told the New Yorker in early 2014, in response to a question regarding the seeming resurgence of al Qaeda in Syria and Iraq, that “[t]he analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.” As this example demonstrates, the Obama Administration and others, in reference to the legality of the use of armed force against al Qaeda and similar …

Law Of War Developments Issue Introduction, David Glazier

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Boundless War: Challenging The Notion Of A Global Armed Conflict Against Al-Qaeda And Its Affiliates, Andrew Beshai

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

The U.S. military response to the 9/11 attacks has expanded into a “global war” without a definite geographic scope. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have executed attacks in several countries including Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen under the “global war” paradigm. This Article challenges the concept of a global armed conflict, instead favoring the “epicenter-of-hostilities” framework for determining the legality of military action against Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and other terrorist groups. This approach, rooted in established international law, measures the existence of specific criteria in each nation where hostile forces are present to determine if an armed conflict in …

Fair Trade: The President’S Power To Recover Captured U.S. Servicemembers And The Recent Prisoner Exchange With The Taliban, Celidon Pitt

Fordham Law Review

    The Obama Administration’s controversial exchange of five Taliban detainees for a captured U.S. soldier in May 2014 reignited a heated debate over the proper scope of wartime executive authority. From a legal perspective, the primary issue centers on the constitutional balance of power between congressional appropriations and the President’s power as Commander in Chief. A complete analysis incorporates both judicial and historical precedent to evaluate the conflict within the broader context of prisoner recovery efforts.

    This Note argues that, regardless of the validity of legislative restrictions on the transfer of Guantánamo detainees, the President possessed sufficient authority to conduct the …

The Failure Of Environmental International Law During Times Of War, Blake Lara

University of Baltimore Journal of Land and Development

Throughout history, war and armed conflict have maintained a continuous presence around the world. Though the reasons for war change, various nations emerge and subside, and populations alter, one of the constant elements of war is its degrading effect on the environment. In addition to indirect effects on the environment that ultimately result from war, nations have used the environment as both a weapon and target of war. For example, during the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans salted Athenian lands to make them infertile. In the Franco-Dutch War from 1672 to 1678, dikes and damns were destroyed in order to create …

Three Arguments About War, Robert Tsai

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

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 …

Awakening Self-Interest: American Military Justice In Afghanistan And Iraq, Frank Rosenblatt

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

A Tradition At War With Itself: A Reply To Professor Rana's Review Of America's Forgotten Constitutions: Defiant Visions Of Power And Community, Robert Tsai

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This essay responds to Professor Aziz Rana's review essay, "The Many American Constitutions," 93 Texas Law Review 1193 (2015).

He contends: (1) my portrayal of American constitutionalism might contain a “hidden” teleological understanding of the development of constitutional law; (2) my notion of "conventional sovereignty" sometimes seems content-free and at other times "interlinked with liberal egalitarianism"; and (3) a focus on failed constitutions "inadvertently tends to compartmentalize the overall tradition."

I answer in the following ways: (1) I reject any sense that constitutional law has moved in an arc of steady progress toward Enlightenment and instead embrace a tradition of …

Game Of Drones, Mary Ellen O'Connell

Journal Articles

Reviewing three 2015 treatises on Drone War

A Theory of the Drone. By Grègoire Chamayou. Translated by Janet Lloyd. New York, London: The New Press, 2015. Pp. 292. Index. $26.95.

International Law and Drone Strikes in Pakistan: The Legal and Socio-political Aspects. By Sikander Ahmed Shah. London, New York: Routledge, 2015. Pp. viii, 247. Index. $145.

Sudden Justice: America's Secret Drone Wars. By Chris Woods. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. xvi, 386. Index. $27.95.

The Role Of The Courts In Time Of War, William C. Banks

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The role of the courts in judging the actions of government in wartime has ranged from extreme deference to careful probing of alleged government excesses over more than two centuries. The courts’ record has reflected the nature of the armed conflicts the United States has engaged in and the legal bases for the actions at issue. In the aggregate, the courts have served as a necessary counterweight to government overreaching in times of national security crisis. It is easy to underestimate the institutional problems confronting judges who are asked to make momentous decisions in times of national crisis—difficulties of fact-finding …

The New Dimensions Of United Nations Peacemaking, Louis B. Sohn

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

On Shaky Grounds: Reasons Behind The Failure To Adhere To The "Powell Doctrine" In The 2003 Iraq Invasion, Sasha Anderson

e-Research: A Journal of Undergraduate Work

Why did we go to war with Iraq and what are we still doing there? This question is one of our most pressing foreign policy issues and continues to be hotly debated by politicians, journalists and citizens. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was executed in a strikingly different fashion than the strategy used in an earlier conflict with Iraq, the Persian Gulf War of 1990-1991. Rather than follow a strategy consisting of clear goals, overwhelming force and a predetermined exit strategy, the US military blundered into Iraq in 2003 without a way to measure victory and without a plan …

Regulating Water And War In Iraq: A Dangerous Dark Side Of New Governance, Tracey Leigh Dowdeswell, Patricia Hania

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In the legal scholarship, the 'new governance' mode of governance advances an administrative arrangement where decision-making is shared amongst a range of actors, both public and private. The flexible, responsive, and collaborative governance orientation is intended to counter the ill effects of a coercive, top-down, state-centric, command-and-control approach to governance. Critics contend the new governance framework can displace the interests of local communities, disempower individuals, and dislodge basic human rights. The U.S. military has adopted such an adaptive approach in its own governance structure, which in this article is referred to as: the new governance "mentality." This mentality of governance …

Sexual Violence Against Men And Women In War: A Masculinities Approach, Valorie K. Vojdik

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Ending Perpetual War? Constitutional War Termination Powers And The Conflict Against Al Qaeda, David A. Simon

Pepperdine Law Review

This Article presents a framework for interpreting the constitutional war termination powers of Congress and the President and applies this framework to questions involving how and when the war against Al Qaeda and associated forces could end. Although constitutional theory and practice suggest the validity of congressional actions to initiate war, the issue of Congress’s constitutional role in ending war has received little attention in scholarly debates. Theoretically, this Article contends that terminating war without meaningful cooperation between the President and Congress generates tension with the principle of the separation of powers underpinning the U.S. constitutional system, with the Framers’ …

Nuclear Kellogg-Briand Pact: Proposing A Treaty For The Renunciation Of Nuclear Wars As An Instrument Of National Policy, David A. Koplow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article performs three functions. First, it offers a revisionist interpretation of the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, the much-maligned treaty through which the key powers of the era, led by the United States, undertook to “outlaw” war, renouncing it as a tool of national policy and committing themselves to resort exclusively to pacific means for the resolution of their international disputes. Because of Kellogg-Briand’s inability to prevent the outbreak of World War II, the treaty has been derided for decades as a futile, utopian illusion, but this article argues that it was, in fact, a tremendous success in altering states’ attitudes …

Pre-Crime Restraints: The Explosion Of Targeted, Non-Custodial Prevention, Jennifer Daskal

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This Article exposes the ways in which noncustodial pre-crime restraints have proliferated over the past decade, focusing in particular on three notable examples — terrorism-related financial sanctions, the No Fly List, and the array of residential, employment, and related restrictions imposed on sex offenders. Because such restraints do not involve physical incapacitation, they are rarely deemed to infringe core liberty interests. Because they are preventive, not punitive, criminal law procedural protections do not apply. They have exploded largely unchecked — subject to little more than bare rationality review and negligible procedural protections — and without any coherent theory as to …

After The Aumf, Jennifer Daskal

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Over a dozen years later, the AUMF — which has never been amended — remains the principal source of the U.S. government’s domestic legal authority to use military force against al Qaeda and its associates, both on the battlefields of Afghanistan and far beyond. But even as the statutory framework has remained unchanged, the facts on the ground have evolved dramatically, leading some to call for a new AUMF. In short, calls for a new framework statute to replace the AUMF are unnecessary, provocative, and counterproductive; they perpetuate war at a time when we should be seeking to end it. …

Examining Warfare In Wi-Fi: A Review, Usawc Parameters

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.