Guest Author
681 Articles
Guest Post: Letter in Support of Harold Koh
Together with others, we have helped to coordinate a Letter in Support of Harold Koh in response to a petition at NYU which questions his qualifications to teach as a human rights…
Appointing Democratic Judges to the FISA Court Won’t Solve Its Structural Flaws
Chief Justice Roberts recently named two new judges to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) — Judge James P. Jones from the Western District of Virginia and Judge…
The Targeted Killing That Wasn’t: What We Can Learn From the Case of Mohanad Mahmoud al-Farekh
A 2009 US Air Force photo titled “Ready to hunt” shows an armed MQ-9 Reaper drone taxiing in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Almost two weeks ago, we learned from the Washington…
Defeating ISIS in Iraq: We Cannot Fight Evil With Evil
News of the “liberation” of Tikrit, the city nearby the birthplace of Saddam Hussein, from occupation by ISIS militants two weeks ago was a welcome advance in the war to destroy…
Iran and Three Questions on the Effectiveness of Sanctions
The April 2 nuclear framework agreement with Iran raises a host of questions about national security strategy, nuclear diplomacy, domestic politics here and in Iran, and the broader…
Is Flawed Terrorism Research Driving Flawed Counterterrorism Policies?
More than thirteen years after the U.S. intelligence community named the prevention of terrorism its number one goal, it seems to have little understanding of what drives terrorism,…
A Proper Response to the Massacre at Kenya’s Garissa University College
The magnitude of last week’s massacre at Garissa University College in Kenya, located roughly 100 miles from the Somalia border, is shocking. In the course of the day, the death…
Guest Post: To Ban New Weapons or Regulate Their Use?
In January, I highlighted the apparent anomaly of international law’s ban on laser weapons that are “specifically designed … to cause permanent blindness” while permitting…
When Does Int’l Humanitarian Law Call for Releasing Prisoners in Armed Conflicts
On March 30, lawyers representing five Afghan detainees at Guantanamo Bay asked President Obama and four senior administration officials to release their clients on the grounds…
A Reply to Janina Dill: Common Ground
We firmly agree with Prof. Janina Dill that a broader societal understanding of civilian harm during wartime and how civilians view that harm is an important aspect of understanding…
Was the Crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 an Act of Terrorism?
On March 24, an Airbus A320 operated by Germanwings crashed in the French Alps while en route from Spain to Germany. Quite soon after, it emerged that the co-pilot of the flight…
Wikimedia v. NSA: Standing and the Fight for Free Speech and Privacy
On March 10, 2015, represented by the ACLU, the Wikimedia Foundation and eight co-plaintiffs filed suit against the NSA, the Justice Department, and others, over the mass search…