Well, “polemic” is probably closer to it. Regular readers have been hearing about this piece for a while, and I have posted various arguments from it (concerning targeted killing and Predator drones and the CIA and armed conflict and self-defense, and my general concern that the Obama administration has embraced a policy that its lawyers […]
Archive | International Human Rights Law
Michael Weiss’ WSJ Comment on Amnesty International
We’ve had several posts at VC on Amnesty International and the controversy over its alliance with a former Guantanamo detainee and his organization, Cageprisoners. As a follow-up, see today’s WSJ comment by Michael Weiss, “Amnesty International and the Taliban.” I agree with its general disapproval of how Amnesty has behaved – Weiss is mild-mannered but […]
Drones as Strategic Airpower and the Counter-Raiding Light Cavalry?
By Kenneth Anderson on February 25, 2010 10:43 am in Counter-Terrorism Policy, International Human Rights Law, Targeted Killing, War on Terror
David Rittgers, a Cato legal analyst and former Special Forces officer, has an excellent op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal on the use of Predator drones. He cautions, on the one hand, against reflexively regarding drone attacks as nonjudicial execution or, really, functionally different from other weapons that soldiers might use – as well as […]
Europe’s Roe v. Wade?
An excellent student note by Shannon K. Calt, forthcoming in the Lewis & Clark Law Review, explains the case of A. B. & C. v. Ireland, currently pending before the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights. The case challenges the Eighth Amendment of the Irish Constitution, which prohibits abortion under almost all circumstances. The […]
Amnesty International and the World of International NGOs
Co-Conspirator DB notes the continuing controversy over Amnesty International, with Salman Rushdie now weighing in. Side note: Although until I come out with my own longer account of my views of the NGO movement, including the human rights monitors, I tend to avoid saying much about human rights groups, I have written a bit about […]
Rushdie on Amnesty International
Salman Rushdie: Amnesty International has done its reputation incalculable damage by allying itself with Moazzam Begg and his group Cageprisoners, and holding them up as human rights advocates. It looks very much as if Amnesty’s leadership is suffering from a kind of moral bankruptcy, and has lost the ability to distinguish right from wrong. (H/T […]
Harold Koh Discussion with John Bellinger on International Law and the Obama Administration
By Kenneth Anderson on February 19, 2010 10:12 am in Counter-Terrorism Policy, International Human Rights Law, International Law, Robotics, Targeted Killing, Terrorism, War on Terror
Harold Koh, Legal Adviser to the State Department, held an informal public discussion a couple of days ago with his predecessor from the Bush administration, John Bellinger. This was an American Society of International Law event, held at John’s law firm, Arnold & Porter, and moderated by my old friend and ASIL’s Treasurer, Nancy Perkins. […]
Interrogating the CIA
By Kenneth Anderson on January 31, 2010 11:02 pm in Counter-Terrorism Policy, International Human Rights Law, Targeted Killing, War on Terror
I just finished up the initial draft of an essay for the Weekly Standard on drone warfare, self defense, and the CIA, riffing off of my chapter in Ben Wittes’s book. One of my observations is that the Obama administration (and really the whole US government) seems to be remarkably sanguine about the other shoe […]
The Emerging Law of Detentions: The Guantanamo Habeas Cases as Lawmaking
By Kenneth Anderson on January 22, 2010 9:22 pm in Counter-Terrorism Policy, International Human Rights Law, Supreme Court, Terrorism, Uncategorized, War on Terror
Anyone doing serious work on detention, Guantanamo, war on terror, any of these areas, will want to read an extraordinary new study just out from the Brookings Institution by Benjamin Wittes, Robert Chesney, and Rabea Benhalim, The Emerging Law of Detention: The Guantanamo Habeas Cases as Lawmaking. (I’ve given the SSRN free download link; here […]
Haiti and Evacuations
By Kenneth Anderson on January 15, 2010 9:19 am in Global Governance/World Government, International Human Rights Law
My Opinio Juris co-blogger Peter Spiro raises an important question about what the US obligations should be in a crisis like Haiti’s. Should the US government put its priority on evacuating its own citizens first? There are an estimated 45,000 US citizens in Haiti, and there’s an assumption that they should be first in line […]
“Human Rights,” According to the Obama Administration
Washington Post editorial: [Secretary of State Clinton] offered an innovation: The Obama administration, she said, would “see human rights in a broad context,” in which “oppression of want — want of food, want of health, want of education, and want of equality in law and in fact” — would be addressed alongside the oppression of […]
The Guantanamo to Illinois Move, at the NYT Room for Debate Blog
By Kenneth Anderson on December 16, 2009 8:54 am in Counter-Terrorism Policy, International Human Rights Law, War on Terror
The NYT Room for Debate blog has a short set of posts from a nicely balanced group on the question of moving detainees from Guantanamo to Illinois. The Obama administration announced on Tuesday its decision to transfer terrorism suspects held at Guantánamo Bay to an empty state prison in Illinois. The move would help fulfill President […]
Should CIA Drone Operators Worry?
By Kenneth Anderson on December 15, 2009 8:59 pm in International Human Rights Law, International Law, Robotics, Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
If this short report in Newsweek is true, then I think I would worry about legal liability more than before, if I were a CIA officer involved in Predator drone strikes. I would have a much greater level of concern that the administration would not back me up in case of an indictment in a […]
CFR Report on Responsibility to Protect and Humanitarian Intervention
By Kenneth Anderson on December 11, 2009 1:09 pm in International Human Rights Law, International Law, War and Armed Conflict
President Obama’s Nobel Prize speech yesterday made reference to the moral authority, under the ethics of the just war, for armed humanitarian intervention in some situations. It is a topic that has been debated and discussed as a matter of international law for, well, a long time, but which gained particular urgency following on Bosnia, […]
Landmines and the Obama Administration
By Kenneth Anderson on November 28, 2009 11:24 am in International Human Rights Law, International Law, War and Armed Conflict
Where is the Obama administration currently on the Ottawa Landmines Ban Convention? The question is on the public table with the opening in a few days of the Cartagena Review Conference, the second diplomatic conference to review the treaty. The Ottawa Convention banning landmines was opened for signature in 1997 and entered into force in […]