After getting a number of email requests for this testimony, I’ve posted it up for convenience at SSRN, although it is also available through the hearing page as well. I submitted along with it my earlier Weekly Standard article, Predators Over Pakistan. As I have said here earlier, however, this hearing on March 23 came […]
Archive | War and Armed Conflict
Harold Koh Statements on Drone Warfare at ASIL Tonight
By Kenneth Anderson on March 25, 2010 11:43 pm in International Human Rights Law, Robotics, Targeted Killing, Terrorism, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
Update: I have had a chance to watch the video twice – I strongly recommend watching it, as it adds considerable language to the statements below in the press release. And welcome Instapundit readers and any others. Given how much I have pressed publicly for a statement by the administration’s lawyers, I want to say […]
Drone Warfare in House Subcommittee Hearing
By Kenneth Anderson on March 24, 2010 11:38 am in Counter-Terrorism Policy, International Human Rights Law, Robotics, Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
Yesterday (Tuesday, March 23, 2010) I was pleased to appear as a witness before the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, to discuss drone warfare and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The list of witnesses is here, along with a link to a webcast (which I can’t seem to open), and links to the witness […]
Response from ACLU’s Jonathan Manes on Drones and US Forces
By Kenneth Anderson on March 22, 2010 6:58 pm in Counter-Terrorism Policy, International Human Rights Law, Robotics, Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
Jonathan Manes, the ACLU lawyer whose work and presentations I have cited a couple of times in posts here at Volokh, and someone for whom, despite some fundamental agreements, I have great respect and like very much, has responded with the following letter. He has given me permission to post it here. The most important […]
House Subcommittee Hearing on Drone Warfare
By Kenneth Anderson on March 22, 2010 1:04 am in Afghanistan, Counter-Terrorism Policy, Robotics, Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
In the midst of the healthcare debate in Congress, other business does go on (sort of), including a subcommittee hearing on drone warfare, at which I’ll be testifying, along with some other experts, including the author of the seminal Wired for War, which put the issue of robotics and war squarely on the table. I’ll […]
Drone Warfare and the Harvard National Security Conference
By Kenneth Anderson on March 9, 2010 1:51 pm in Counter-Terrorism Policy, Robotics, Targeted Killing, Terrorism, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
I’m writing from Cambridge, where I just finished a great short conference on targeted killing and drone warfare put on by the Harvard Law School National Security Law Society and Journal. The presentations should go up as video one of these days I hope!) and I highly recommend them if you are studying this topic. […]
Predators over Pakistan, My New Weekly Standard Essay
By Kenneth Anderson on February 28, 2010 3:47 pm in Counter-Terrorism Policy, International Human Rights Law, International Law, Robotics, Targeted Killing, Terrorism, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
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 […]
Comstock and National Security Detentions
By Ilya Somin on January 12, 2010 11:41 pm in Commerce Clause, Federalism, Necessary and Proper, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
Co-blogger Ken Anderson asks: Here’s my question to the VC Staff: Are there any implications of Comstock, in the hearings, briefs, arguments, suggesting that anyone involved is weighing this up at least partly in terms of implications for what it might mean down the road for a Congressional national security administrative detention statute or authority? […]
More Predator Drone Debate, in the Wall Street Journal, and What the Obama Administration Should Do as a Public Legal Position
By Kenneth Anderson on January 9, 2010 5:37 pm in Robotics, Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
The Wall Street Journal has a weekend editorial on the same topic as my National Journal post below, Drone Wars, January 9, 2010. Interestingly, I find myself believing that the WSJ editorial gets it, if not precisely wrong, at least puts the emphasis exactly backwards. The WSJ editorial is primarily concerned to defend the “war” frame […]
National Journal on Targeted Killing and Predator Drone Strikes
By Kenneth Anderson on January 8, 2010 11:42 pm in Robotics, Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
(Update: Thanks, Glenn, for the Instalanche! Please see the further post above, on what I think the US legal position ought to be – what the Obama administration should be stating as its view of the relevant international law, and how I think the WSJ’s op-ed today in defense of drone strikes is not actually […]
Yemen, Somalia and ….
By Kenneth Anderson on December 30, 2009 8:20 pm in Counter-Terrorism Policy, International Law, Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
Following up on Eric’s post re President Obama’s legal authority to target in Yemen … I’m a bit of a broken record on the need for the United States government to articulate a more coherent legal basis for its targeted killing. But it is just more so since the Christmas terrorist attack … the range […]
Relentlessly Tactical, Event-Specific Catastrophism, and the Limits of Cost-Benefit Analysis
By Kenneth Anderson on December 29, 2009 3:00 pm in Counter-Terrorism Policy, Terrorism, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
I’m traveling, so have not been able to comment as I’d like regarding the Christmas terror attack. However, I wanted to add one thought about cost benefit analysis and counter-terrorism. A couple of years ago I wrote a paper on ways in which the American political class is riven by deep foundational disagreements about the […]
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 […]
Just War Ethics in the Obama Nobel Prize Speech
As has been widely discussed, and Roger Alford at Opinio Juris notes, President Obama’s Nobel Prize speech drew extensively upon just war ethics. I will try to come back to this very interesting topic of just war ethics later on, but not before the … corporate finance and IBT exams are graded! Meanwhile, the distinguished […]
“Guilty” Battlefield Robots
By Kenneth Anderson on December 13, 2009 1:25 pm in International Law, Robotics, Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict
One of my favorite issues of the New York Times Magazine is its “year in ideas” issue, which comes annually in December. It has a short item this year related to battlefield robotics and law and ethics, by Dara Kerr, “Guilty Robots.” (If you go over the Opinio Juris version of this post, you can pick […]