Military, War, and Peace Commons^™

The South Texas Drought And The Future Of Groundwater Use For Hydraulic Fracturing In The Eagle Ford Shale., Taelor A. Allen

St. Mary's Law Journal

Texas has undergone a succession of historic droughts, each one creating unique problems and controversies. The state is also one of the largest national producers of oil and gas with the Eagle Ford Shale fields contributing to the production boom. The technique used to extract the oil is called hydraulic fracturing, which requires large volumes of water to be injected at high pressures to “frac” and release gas from an underground formation. The amount of water required places even greater strain on the regional water supply. This Comment highlights legal issues raised by the high volumes of groundwater used for …

Extending Positive Identification From Persons To Places: Terrorism, Armed Conflict, And The Identification Of Military Objectives, Laurie R. Blank

Utah Law Review

In January 2013, French forces combating rebel forces in Mali attacked "Islamic targets" in northern Mali and French fighter planes "hit rebel targets in the northern cities of Gao and Kidal" Turkish forces frequently attack "rebel positions," fighting the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Iraq's Kurdistan region, and the Sri Lankan Army targeted "terroris stronghold[s]" during the conflict with the Tamil Tigers. The Israel Defense Forces contend with "rocket villages" in Hezbollah-dominated areas in southern Lebanon and with the complexities of a periodically intensifying conflict with a terroris entity governing the Gaza Strip. In Afghanistan, U.S. and multinational forces seek …

Future Technology And Ethics In War, James J. Carafano

Utah Law Review

The influence of technology on war is overrated. Technology does not win wars. It does not lose wars. It does not even fight wars. People do. New technology is the handmaiden of change, but even technologies that take the human "out of the loop" have a hand behind the handmaiden. New technologies pose far fewer new ethical challenges to warfare than is often supposed. The current wave of technological innovation, which is largely derivative of innovations in data processing and transmission, will not change the traditional relationship between technology and ethics in war very much.

Legal And Ethical Precepts Governing Emerging Military Technologies: Research And Use, George R. Lucas

Utah Law Review

From the emergence and increasing use of unmanned or remotely piloted vehicles to the advent of cyber war and conflict, the development of new and exotic military technologies has provoked fierce and divisive public debate regarding the ethical challenges posed by such technologies.1 I have increasingly come to believe that the language of morality and ethics has served us poorly in this context and presently serves to further confuse us, rather than to clarify or enlighten us, on how best to cope with the continuing development and deployment of seemingly exotic new military technologies.

The Humanitarian Problem With Drones, Frédéric Mégret

Utah Law Review

One of the difficulties with the debate on drones is that it has become a sort of lightning rod for all kinds of anxieties about the use of force in today’s world. Drones are, often problematically, the emblematic weapon for a range of other phenomena, and unsurprisingly, attract much polemic. The challenge, therefore, is to find the specific problem with drones as a technology in armed conflict that could not be dealt with better by invoking a larger genus of problems. To do this, this Article outlines ways in which drones have been seen as problematic, which this Article argues …

Roundtable Discussion Transcript, Amos N. Guiora

Utah Law Review

Roundtable Moderator:

Amos Guiora, Professor of Law, Co-Director of the Center for Global Justice, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law.

Roundtable Participants:

Harry Soyster, United States Army Lieutenant General (Ret.); former Director, Defense Intelligence Agency;

David Irvine, United States Army Brigadier General (Ret.); former Deputy Commander for the 96th Regional Rediness Command;

Geoffrey S. Corn, Professor of Law; Presidnetial Research Professor, South Texas College of Law;

James Carafano, Vice President, Foreign and Defense Policy Studies; E.W. Richardson Fellow; and Director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, The Heritage Foundation;

Claire Finkelstein, Algernon Biddle …

Gideon At Guantánamo, Neal K. Katyal

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The right to counsel maintains an uneasy relationship with the demands of trials for war crimes. Drawing on the author’s personal experiences from defending a Guantánamo detainee, the Author explains how Gideon set a baseline for the right to counsel at Guantánamo. Whether constitutionally required or not, Gideon ultimately framed the way defense lawyers represented their clients. Against the expectations of political and military leaders, both civilian and military lawyers vigorously challenged the legality of the military trial system. At the same time, tensions arose because lawyers devoted to a particular cause (such as attacking the Guantánamo trial system) were …

Prosecutor V. Perišić, Case No. It-04-81-A, International Criminal Tribunal For The Former Yugoslavia, Chris Jenks

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This note introduces a controversial ICTY decision which attempted to clarify the requisite elements required to convict the former head of the Army of Yugoslavia with aiding and abetting war crimes committed by other organizations in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. The Perišić judgment serves as a reminder of the still unsettled nature of international criminal law on even threshold issues like the elements for a mode of liability. Given that the Special Court for Sierra Leone has already affirmatively rejected the Perišić formulation the case may, sadly, signal the fragmentation of international criminal law.

Networks In Non-International Armed Conflicts: Crossing Borders And Defining "Organized Armed Group", Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Chemical Weapons "Red Line": What International And United States Law Say About The Use Of Chemical Weapons And Why We Should Care, Ghirlandi C. Guidetti

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Energy Security, Green Fleets, And Green Warriors, Jennifer Huang

Florida A & M University Law Review

The U.S. military, both our nation's largest consumer and securer of energy, can no longer be absolved of the high costs and environmental consequences of its reliance on conventional fuel sources and energy systems in the face of mounting evidence of unavoidable global warming and climate change. The oil-dependent U.S. national and energy security policies that have helped achieved American military and economic greatness are no longer sustainable; in fact, uncovering the hidden costs of our oil addiction reveals many insecurities. In order to progress towards true energy independence, the U.S. must overcome its congressional in-fighting, and kick-start its promising …

All Other Breaches: State Practice And The Geneva Conventions’ Nebulous Class Of Less Discussed Prohibitions, Jesse Medlong

Michigan Journal of International Law

With respect to the protections afforded by the Geneva Conventions, a great deal of ink has been spilled in recent years over the two-tiered system of tribunals employed by the United States in its prosecution of enemy combatants in the “war on terror.” Less discussed, though, is the wholly separate two-tiered system for sorting violators of the Geneva Conventions that emerges from the very text of those agreements. This stratification is a function of the Conventions’ distinction between those who commit “grave breaches” and those who merely commit “acts contrary to the provisions of the present convention” or “all other …

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 …

Introduction: Persecution Through Prosecution: Revisiting Touro Law Center’S Conference In Paris On The Dreyfus Affair And The Leo Frank Trial, Rodger D. Citron

Touro Law Review

This piece provides the introduction for the Dreyfus affair. It gives a brief overview of the actual Dreyfus affair and outlines the articles in this volume.

‘Germans Are The Lords And Poles Are The Servants’: The Trial Of Arthur Greiser In Poland, 1946, In The Hidden Histories Of War Crimes Trials (Kevin Jon Heller & Gerry Simpson Eds., 2013), Mark A. Drumbl

Books and Chapters

In the aftermath of World War II, the first conviction of an influential Nazi German official for the crime of waging aggressive war was delivered not by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, but, rather, by the Supreme National Tribunal of Poland sitting in Poznán. The accused was Arthur Greiser. Beginning in September 1939, Greiser served as Gauleiter (i.e. Governor) of the Warthegau, a large expanse of western Poland that had been illegally annexed to Nazi Germany. The Warthegau's residents suffered brutally under Greiser's boot.

The Polish Tribunal sentenced Greiser to death on July 9, 1946. His execution by public …

A Behavioral Economic Approach To Nuclear Disarmament Advocacy, Alexander S. Rinn

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Nuclear disarmament advocates have provided a strong moral voice for the total disarmament of nuclear weapons, but if they are to remain credible participants in the disarmament process, they must redouble their efforts to assist in the difficult technical and political obstacles that stand in the way of a world without nuclear weapons. This Note first outlines impediments to disarmament towards which advocates could helpfully direct their attention, such as: conventional force imbalances; developing "proliferation-safe" civil nuclear technologies; enforcing nonproliferation obligations; and verifying nuclear disarmament. Second, it explains how tools from behavioral economics and negotiation theory could inform a more …

Breaking The Mexican Cartels: A Key Homeland Security Challenge For The Next Four Years, Carrie F. Cordero

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Although accurate statistics are hard to come by, it is quite possible that 60,000 people have died in the last six-plus years as a result of armed conflict between the Mexican cartels and the Mexican government, amongst cartels fighting each other, and as a result of cartels targeting citizens. And this figure does not even include the nearly 40,000 Americans who die each year from using illegal drugs, much of which is trafficked through the U.S.-Mexican border. The death toll is only part of the story. The rest includes the terrorist tactics used by cartels to intimidate the Mexican people …

Organizing For Cyberspace Operations: Selected Issues, Paul Walker

International Law Studies

No abstract provided.

Anticipatory Self-Defense And The Israeli-Iranian Crisis: Some Remarks, Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Invention Of A Human Right: Conscientious Objection At The United Nations, 1947-2011, Jeremy Kessler

Faculty Scholarship

The right of conscientious objection to military service is the most startling of human rights. While human rights generally seek to protect individuals from state power, the right of conscientious objection radically alters the citizen-state relationship, subordinating a state's decisions about national security to the beliefs of the individual citizen. In a world of nation-states jealous of their sovereignty, how did the human right of conscientious objection become an international legal doctrine? By answering that question, this Article both clarifies the legal pedigree of the human right of conscientious objection and sheds new light on the relationship between international human …