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Guest Post: Drone Courts–A Response to Professor Vladeck
Editors’ note: In this post, Professors Brand, Guiora, and Barela reply to Steve Vladeck’s December 2 post, “Drone Courts: The Wrong Solution to the Wrong Problem,”…

The Unintended Consequences of the 2001 AUMF Sunset
I join Ryan Goodman in applauding the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under the strong leadership of its Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), and many others…

Five Torturous Steps to Hell
In a short and early section of the SSCI’s redacted summary of its torture report, we can read about the step-by-step descent from humanity to inhumanity, from the 20th century…

Guest Post: They Knew It Was Illegal
The Senate Intelligence Committee report released December 9 confirms many already-reported facts about the CIA torture program, including the agency’s use of brutal stress positions,…

State Responsibility and Reparation for Torture as a Violation of IHL
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) yesterday released the redacted executive summary of its report on the CIA’s rendition, detention and interrogation program.…

Torture: Unreliable and Inestimably Costly
A few years ago, I served as a member of the Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment – an 11-member, bi-partisan group of former, high-ranking officials in…

An Intelligence Committee Agenda
There are big changes coming to the congressional intelligence committees in the 114th Congress, with new leadership in both the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI)…

The Hidden Costs of Alabama’s Anti-Foreign Law Measure
On Election Day last month, Alabama became the ninth state to impose onerous restrictions on how its courts can consider and apply foreign and international law. Those concerned…

Guest Post: NSA Reform — The Consequences of Failure
If you were expecting this to be a detailed post-mortem on the demise of the USA Freedom Act, you will be disappointed. As others have covered that ground, I want to focus on the…

The Long Game: Why the Extension of Nuclear Talks With Iran is a Good Thing
Somewhere, Harry Truman is smiling. On Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry announced an extension of the Joint Plan of Action (JPA). This interim accord, reached in late 2013,…

The Global Reach of the U.S. Position on Torture
The U.S. government’s public pronouncement that the Convention Against Torture (CAT) applies beyond U.S. borders and in situations of armed conflict—its unequivocal “yes”…

Clarity or Confusion? General Comment 35 and Security Detention
I’d like to raise a few issues about security detention that Shaheed Fatima didn’t cover in her thoughtful posts (here and here) on the Human Rights Committee’s (HRC) new…