Author Archive | Kenneth Anderson

As a professor but also parent of a college freshman (go Rice, &tc), I tend to see the debate over higher education from both ends.  I have a good idea of the inputs but I also have a good idea of the machinery.  And, as a law professor, I also have some idea of the […]

The eurozone is on the verge of meltdown, taking whole economies and banking systems with it, and spreading to the US through the systemic interwiring of the international financial system. Or not. European meetings to avert disaster are coming unglued and the moment when the markets simply stop turning over debt and re-lending is finally […]

Benjamin Wittes at Lawfare has been keeping a running track of factual difficulties in Times editorials over the last year dealing with Guantanamo detention and other terrorism related issues.  The paper today issued a correction to an editorial, and the Lawfare discussion of the correct and the misstatements in the original editorial, as well its […]

A perennial question that arises about the use of force – but with particular emphasis now that drones are in the equation – is why the CIA is directly involved in the conduct of any uses of force, including drone operations?   Why shouldn’t the military be the only ones authorized to engage in these […]

Notre Dame’s David Cortright writes at CNN.com on the spread of weaponized drones (Chris Borgen, thanks).  He says in part: Any development that makes war appear to be easier or cheaper is dangerous and morally troubling. It lowers the political threshold of war. It threatens to weaken the moral presumption against the use of armed […]

Pollster Douglas Schoen describes the results of his firm’s polling of attitudes and views among the Occupy Wall Street protestors in New York City’s Succotti Park.  It leads him to warn Democratic Party strategists that the protestors are very far from the center of American voters’ views and that it is a dangerous electoral strategy […]

Over the weekend, I read Amy B. Zegart’s new short book, Eyes on Spies, which deals with the persistent failures of Congress to engage in effective intelligence oversight.  (The book is in a Hoover Institution Press series that features short books – brisk and brief, readable in a single plane flight – focused on a […]

Congratulations to Professor Robert Sloane and BU Law School for a fine conference yesterday, “Ten Years In: Appraising the International Law of the ‘Long War’ in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” The conference was co-sponsored by the American Society of International Law’s Lieber Society, which deals with laws of war issues, and the Naval War College. The […]

David Bosco, my American University colleague and author of the always interesting The Multilateralist blog at Foreign Policy, has posted an interview between him and Joel Wuthnow (Princeton’s China and the World Program) on China’s diplomacy at the UN Security Council.  Among many interesting exchanges, this comment on China’s overall role in the world: The […]

UCLA Law School’s Sanela Daniela Jenkins Human Rights Project has a special joint online forum with the International Criminal Court office of the prosecutor, which is currently running commentary on the question of prevention, and how the ICC can maximize its crime prevention impact. It features contributions from a variety of experts from a variety […]

New York Times national security correspondent Scott Shane has an opinion piece in today’s Sunday Times predicting an “arms race” in military drones. The methodology essentially looks at the US as the leader, followed by Israel – countries that have built, deployed and used drones in both surveillance and as weapons platforms. It then looks […]

So concludes constitutional law and national security scholar Philip Bobbitt, in an email comment to Ben Wittes at Lawfare.  Bobbitt is responding to Wittes’ post on a Awlaki-targeting question raised at Lawfare, here at OJ, and at Volokh, as well as in an opinion piece this morning by the New York Times public editor, Arthur […]

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta delivered a speech Friday at a NATO air base in Italy in which he praised NATO operations in Libya, reports the Wall Street Journal; Panetta delivered his remarks standing in front of a US surveillance drone.  I myself am relatively agnostic on the Libyan conflict as such.  However, something I […]

I’m traveling and can’t stop to comment, but check out Charlie Savage’s New York Times story describing a secret DOJ memo, reportedly principally authored by David Barron and Marty Lederman, that provided the justification for putting Anwar Al-Awlaki on the targeting list in the first place.  Crucial reading on the targeted killing and drone debate. One […]

xkcd. Caption: “There’s always the hope that if you sit and watch long enough, the beachball will vanish and the thing it interrupted will return.” (Open for comments.)