National Security Law Commons^™

This Call May Be Monitored: Is Nsa Wiretapping Legal?

William Mitchell Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Dark Side Of Counterterrorism

William Mitchell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ghost Detainees: Does The Isolation And Interrogation Of Detainees Violate Common Article 3 Of The Geneva Conventions?, Thomas F. Berndt, Alethea M. Huyser

William Mitchell Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Power Of Information: The Clash Between The Public's Right To Know And The Government's Security Concerns In A Post-September 11th World, Adam S. Davis

William Mitchell Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Cost Of Confusion: Resolving Ambiguities In Detainee Treatment, Kenneth Anderson

Research Reports & White Papers

This short policy paper considers US counterterrorism policy with particular attention to treatment of detainees in matters of challenging detention, interrogation, trial of detainees, and release. It analyzes the existing US war on terror and considers future policies that would address both national security concerns and human rights/civil liberties concerns. The paper is written by two experts and advocates in counterterrorism-related issues, coming from the center right and the center left in American politics, as part of a project of the Stanley Foundation, Bridging the Foreign Policy Divide, which publishes papers by pairs of experts coming from conservative and progressive …

Individual And State Responsibility For Intelligence Gathering, Dieter Fleck

Michigan Journal of International Law

It is the purpose of this contribution to examine relevant norms and principles for assessing acts of intelligence gathering under international law (Part I), evaluate legal problems of attribution of such acts (Part II), and, where governments commit wrongful acts, look into circumstances precluding their wrongfulness (Part III). Based on these considerations, legal consequences for criminal accountability (Part IV) and reparation (Part V) will be discussed. Finally, some conclusions may be drawn (Part VI).

The Law Of War And Its Pathologies, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

War is with us more than ever. This is true despite the efforts of the United Nations Charter to ban the concept of war from the vocabulary of its member states. The preferred term is armed conflict. True, the Charter does refer to the Second World War, but apart from this concession to historically entrenched labels, the W word appears only once-when the Charter refers to ridding the world of the scourge of war. The Geneva Conventions, adopted a few years later, follow the same pattern. George Orwell could not be more amused. We change the vocabulary and think we …

Human Rights And The War On Terror Second Edition: Introduction, Jack Donnelly

Human Rights & Human Welfare

“9/11 changed everything.” Not really. In fact, there has been far more continuity than change over the past six years in both international and domestic politics. Nonetheless, human rights often have been harmed—although not by terrorism but by “the war on terror.”

Title Page

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Title page for the 2007 supplement to the Human Rights and the War on Terror topical research digest.

Keynote Address, Jeffrey H. Smith

Michigan Journal of International Law

This afternoon, I want to touch briefly on a number of issues rather than discuss one or two to death. I chose this approach because it seemed an appropriate way to open a conference. I also chose it because I hope I can convince you that intelligence and international law interact in a way that simultaneously strengthens the law and improves intelligence; that law matters, especially in time of war; and that both good intelligence and good law have one common core value: integrity. So that you will have a sense of the perspective that I bring to this, I …

National Security And Environmental Laws: A Clear And Present Danger?, Hope M. Babcock

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Without question, life in the United States has changed significantly since September 11, 2001. The attacks launched from within the United States in broad daylight against non-military targets and innocent civilians, followed by the intentional dispersal of the biological agent anthrax, ushered in an era of uncertainty and fear in this country unlike any in recent memory. The visible manifestations of this fear are still with us--concrete barriers and the closing of public spaces around public buildings, heightened security at airports and train stations subjecting people to invasive searches of their persons and belongings, the sudden, seemingly random appearance of …

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 …

U.S. Counterterrorism Policy And Superpower Compliance With International Human Rights Norms, Kenneth Anderson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This essay, originally prepared for a symposium on Guantanamo and international law, provides an brief overview of the elements that a comprehensive US counterterrorism should encompass. This overview is set against the question of how the US, as the world's superpower, ought to address its international law obligations. The essay then sets that question against the still-further question of what it means to be the superpower in a world that some believe is gradually evolving into a multipolar world, but which is currently a world of a conjoined US-international global system of security.

The essay defends the concept of counterterrorism …

The Rule Of Law And The Military Commission, Stephen J. Ellmann

Articles & Chapters

This essay examines the underlying foundations of the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. After laying out many of the features of the conflicting positions taken by the majority and dissents in the case, the article argues that the majority's judgment was by no means determined by the plain meaning of the statutory provisions at issue, nor even by the Steel Seizure framework of overlapping zones of executive and legislative power. Instead, three factors deserve special emphasis. The first is the Court's effort to protect, and catalyze, Congressional authority. The second is the Court's understanding of its own role …

After Action Review (Aar) Of Attendance At The Brazilian Army Command And General Staff College, Gary Corn

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

In 2005, I was the first member of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAG Corps) to attend a foreign command and general staff college (CGSC). This article provides a summary of my attendance at the Brazilian Army's Command and General Staff College-Escola de Comando e Estado Maior do Extrcito (ECEME). Through a unique series of events, I was selected and attended the Brazilian Army's ECEME, a ten-month CGSC equivalent, where I studied brigade and division-level operations through the lens of a foreign military. This rare opportunity not only afforded me a unique and valuable professional development experience, it …

Redefining Torture In The Age Of Terrorism: An Argument Against The Dilution Of Human Rights, Miri Lim

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Beware Of Boldness, Conrad C. Crane

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

Christina M. Cerna On The Torture Papers: The Road To Abu Ghraib. Edited By Karen J. Greenberg And Joshua L. Dratel. Cambridge, Ma: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 1249 Pp., Christina M. Cerna

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib. Edited by Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 1249 pp.

Researching National Security And Intelligence Policy (Book Review), Robert J. Weiner Jr.

College of Law - Law Library Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

In The Service Of Secrets: The U.S. Supreme Court Revisits Totten, 39 J. Marshall L. Rev. 475 (2006), Douglas Kash, Matthew Indrisano

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Examining The Declining Utility Of Military Force, Ali Wyne

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War by Andrew J. Bacevich. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. 270pp.

Waging War Against Terror: An Essay For Sandy Levinson, Philip Chase Bobbitt

Faculty Scholarship

Wars are acts of State, and therefore there has never been a "war on terror." Of course states have fought terrorism, in many guises, for centuries. But a war on terror had to await the development of states – including virtual states like al Qaeda's global ummah – whose constitutional order was not confined to a particular territory or national group and for whom terror could therefore be a permanent state of international affairs, either sought in order to prevent persons within a state's control from resisting oppression by accessing global, empowering resources and networks, or suffered because other states …

The Limits Of Courage And Principle, Jedediah Purdy

Michigan Law Review

Michael Ignatieff, the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is not a lawyer. His work, however, treats issues of core concern to lawyers: nation-building, human rights, the ethics of warfare, and now, in his latest book, the proper relationship between liberty and security. The Lesser Evil is, in part, a book a legal scholar might have written: a normative framework for lawmaking in the face of the terror threat. It is also something more unusual: an exercise in an older type of jurisprudence. Ignatieff discusses law in the light of moral psychology …

Fighting Terrorism And Preserving Civil Liberties, James B. Comey

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Defending Human Rights In The "War" Against Terror, Douglass Cassel

Journal Articles

Safeguarding human rights in our "war" against terrorism is both the right and the smart thing to do. It is right because human rights embody our fundamental values as Americans and as Christians. Our Constitution stands for freedom; our Creator teaches us to respect the God-given dignity of each human soul. Christians are called to cherish human dignity, not only of innocents, and not only of captives in war whose status as combatant or civilian may be uncertain, but also of cardinal sinners, the terrorists themselves. Christ Jesus teaches us to hate the sin, but somehow to bring ourselves to …

Fear, Legal Indeterminacy, And The American Lawyering Culture, Michael Hatfield

Articles

On August 1, 2002, then Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee signed for President Bush a memorandum of law concluding that some torture was not necessarily illegal if the President ordered it. This Essay examines how Bybee could arrive at a conclusion that is fundamentally at odds with both our national moral spirit and our law. In doing so, it cautions American lawyers to recognize the difference between what is "legal" and what is "arguably legal, " and to be aware of their own extra-legal biases when interpreting the law.

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold War: Intelligence And International Law, Simon Chesterman

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article will focus on the narrower questions of whether obtaining secret intelligence-that is, without the consent of the state that controls the information-is subject to international legal norms or constraints, and what restrictions, if any, control the use of this information once obtained. Traditional approaches to the question of the legitimacy of spying, when even asked, typically settle on one of two positions: either collecting secret intelligence remains illegal despite consistent practice, or apparent tolerance has led to a "deep but reluctant admission of the lawfulness of such intelligence gathering, when conducted within customary normative limits.” Other writers have …

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 …

Waging War Against Terror: An Essay For Sandy Levinson, Philip Bobbitt

Georgia Law Review

Wars are acts of State, and therefore there has never been a "war on terror." Of course states have fought terrorism, in many guises, for centuries. But a war on terror had to await the development of states-including virtual states like al Qaeda's global ummah 2-whose constitutional order was not confined to a particular territory or national group and for whom terror could therefore be a permanent state of international affairs, either sought in order to prevent persons within a state's control from resisting oppression by accessing global, empowering resources and networks, or suffered because other states wished to press …

The Emancipation Proclamation And The Commander In Chief Power, Michael S. Paulsen

Georgia Law Review

Levinson, a good Socratic teacher, poses the question what is the relationship of emergency or necessity to constitutional power, constitutional rights, and constitutional interpretation generally, and surrounds it with a characteristically fascinating discussion. But while his leanings are clear, he does not clearly answer the question his discussion poses. One can certainly infer that Levinson dislikes Carl Schmitt's legal theories of emergency, which he sees as justifying Hitler's rise to power. And it certainly comes through quite clearly that Levinson feels the same way about the U.S. Department of Justice's legal analysis concerning detention and interrogation of war prisoners (which …