JILP Forum

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The Fall 2011 issue of the Journal of International Law and Politics will soon be available at our official NYU website.  Stay tuned for our online discussion hosted by Opinio Juris featuring reactions from leading scholars to the following three articles:

• Lea Brilmayer & Isaias Tesfalidet, Third State Obligations and the Enforcement of International Law, 44 N.Y.U. J. Int’l L. & Pol. 1 (2011).
• Ming-Sung Kuo, Taming Governance with Legality? Critical Reflections upon Global Administrative Law as Small-c Global Constitutionalism, 44 N.Y.U. J. Int’l L. & Pol. 55 (2011).
• Shana Tabak, False Dichotomies of Transitional Justice: Gender, Conflict and Combatants in Colombia, 44 N.Y.U. J. Int’l L. & Pol. 103 (2011).

On October 14, 2011, NYU School of Law will host a symposium entitled “From Rights to Reality: Beth Simmons’s Mobilizing for Human Rights and its Intersection with International Law.  The Journal of International Law and Politics is proud to co-sponsor this event with the International Law Society and Law Students for Human Rights.  It will examine Beth Simmons’s award-winning book, “Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics,” and present reactions from leading scholars on the empirical effects and theoretical implications of promoting human rights through the instruments of international law.  Please RSVP here.

For more information, please visit our Symposium Page.

Our summer 2011 issue is now available online at our official NYU website.

• Margaret L. Satterthwaite, Indicators in Crisis: Rights-Based Humanitarian Indicators in Post-Earthquake Haiti, 43 N.Y.U. J. Int’l L. & Pol. 865 (2011).
• Doreen Lustig, The Nature of the Nazi State and the Question of International Criminal Responsibility of Corporate Officials at Nuremberg: Revisiting Franz Neumann’s Concept of Behemoth at the Industrialist Trials, 43 N.Y.U. J. Int’l L. & Pol. 965 (2011).
• Laura C. Turano, Note, The Gender Dimension of Transitional Justice Mechanisms, 43 N.Y.U. J. Int’l L. & Pol. 1045 (2011).

Also check out our book annotations.

By Graham Dumas (J.D. Candidate 2011)

Philip Alston famously described the use of drones by the U.S. military and the CIA as potentially leading to a “playstation mentality,” in which the human and capital costs of strikes are so decreased from the perspective of the striking force that fewer precautions are taken in conducting such strikes. The criticism is valid, although it has been refuted by government lawyers from Harold Koh on down.

Yet reduced costs may not have universally negative results. Michael Walzer, in his seminal work Just and Unjust Wars, wrote about the moral duty on combatants to expose themselves to further risk in order to save the lives of civilians caught in combat zones. With drones, however, especially the land-based models described recently in the New York Times, the reduction or even elimination of risk to the human operator could make it easier for the military to warn effectively the civilian population ahead of or during operations. What is more, the moral ambiguity of using human soldiers as tools for the aim of reducing civilian casualties, which arises from the government’s duty to ensure (as far as possible) the right to life of its own forces, all but disappears with the use of drones.

One of the most effective uses of robotic vehicles in combat, then, may not be to kill the enemy, but to warn the innocent. The “playstation mentality” may thus reduce the apparent costs of giving effective advance warning to non-combatants–forces will be more willing to go farther to warn, just as they have been in executing strikes. Taking it a step further, there could be a legitimate argument that, as militaries acquire drone technology, they could become bound by article 57 of Additional Protocol I to use those drones to ascertain the status of potential targets and to ensure that civilians are not threatened during operations.

This is, of course, not to exonerate or justify the use of drones in warfare; the position I take is neutral and without prejudice to, for example, the U.S. military’s campaign of Predator strikes in the Af-Pak region.

The NYU Journal of International Law and Politics is pleased to introduce the members of its 2010-2012 staff.  As a student-run journal at the best international law program in the U.S., JILP provides a unique opportunity to become acquainted with the rich world of international law scholarship.  Welcome aboard!

Like many student-run journals in the U.S., the Journal of International Law and Politics selects its staff through an anonymous process that evaluates their knowledge of and experience with international law, their writing and editing skills, and their academic performance.  This year saw particularly fierce competition for the limited number of spaces on our staff, and we couldn’t be more pleased with the results.  Hit the jump for the names of our new staff editors, and vist the About page for the complete masthead.

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