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By John Thorlin, NSJ Staff Editor – Assassinating foreign leaders outside of an ongoing armed conflict is of questionable legality, even if doing so would prevent a broader war.  Humanitarian interventions such as the NATO bombings in Kosovo–acts deliberately aimed at saving lives–are prohibited by the laws of war, which do not differentiate between the motivations for acts of armed aggression across borders.   Why do the laws of war–including international humanitarian law (IHL) and international criminal law–in these and many other real and hypothetical cases forbid actions that could result in a net saving of lives?  Gabriella Blum, an […]

As part of the continuing war in Afghanistan, the United States has made extensive use of unmanned Predator drones to carry out reconnaissance as well as armed strikes.  On Monday The New York Times reported that a U.S. drone killed three militants in North Waziristan, and on Friday CNN reported that a Haqqani network commander was killed in a drone strike.  The use of unmanned aircraft is likely to continue expanding: The Washington Post reports that the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command continues to search for a dedicated unmanned intelligence-gathering airship.  Although drones can ensure mission capability while

By Jonathan Abrams, NSJ Staff Editor – On March 23rd, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments concerning the power of a federal judge to compel the Executive to admit detainees into the United States.  But a two sentence order issued by the Court on Friday signaled that new developments may result in the Court never reaching the merits. The case, Kieymba v. Obama, involves a group of Uighurs, Chinese Muslims who were captured by bounty hunters in the early days of the Afghanistan war.  The Bush administration declared the group enemy combatants and they were sent to Guantanamo. 

Representative Candace Miller (R-MI) has introduced H.R. 4415, the Terrorist Detention and Prosecution Act of 2010.  The bill expands the definition of unlawful enemy combatant, codified at 10 U.S.C. § 948 to include persons determined by the President to be closely associated with Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, to have taken up arms on behalf of Al Qaeda, or to have committed or conspired to commit acts of terrorism in the United States.  Most significantly, it would apply “regardless of the location of the person’s capture.”  The bill would give the President the authority to detain any unlawful enemy

The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill points to the recent deaths of three United States special forces soldiers in Pakistan as further evidence of the existence of an extensive, but classified American military presence in that country. Scahill highlights a number of reasons to be suspicious of the United States Government’s claims that the soldiers were part of a training mission.  He cites a Pakistani journalist who claims that some of the U.S. soldiers had been dressed in civilian clothes and had been identified by Pakistani handlers as journalists. Moreover, he points to a potential discrepancy in numbers—a United States Central Command

By John Thorlin, NSJ Staff Editor – Writing for the Yale Journal of International Law, Prof. Robert Sloane of the Boston University School of Law delves into the national security variant of the old debate about ends and means–the distinction and relationship between the concepts of jus ad bellum, the law governing resort to force, and jus in bello, the law governing the conduct of hostilities.  Since the introduction of the U.N. Charter, the two concepts have been separated: regardless of how a nation justifies its goals in a given conflict, it must adhere to the same set of in