scholarly journals Biden Administration Relies on Constitutional Authority and Unwilling or Unable Theory of Self-Defense for Airstrikes in Syria

2021 ◽  
Vol 115 (3) ◽  
pp. 567-572
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Legal Authority ◽  
Military Policy ◽  
Presidential Approval ◽  
War Powers ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Drone Strikes ◽  
Individual Self

On February 25, 2021, the United States conducted a strike targeting Iranian-backed militia group facilities in Syria. The strike, which came in response to a February 15, 2021 attack on U.S. interests in Iraq, marked the Biden administration's first known exercise of executive war powers. As domestic authority for the strike, President Joseph Biden, Jr. cited his authority under Article II of the U.S. Constitution and did not rely on the 2001 or 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMFs). For international legal authority, Biden relied on individual self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, stating that Syria was “unwilling or unable” to prevent further attacks on the United States by these non-state actors within its territory. The strikes garnered mixed reactions from Congress, where efforts are underway to repeal or reform extant AUMFs as well as the War Powers Resolution (WPR). The Biden administration is also undertaking a review of current U.S. military policy on the use of force, and during this process, it has prohibited drone strikes outside of conventional battlefields, absent presidential approval.

scholarly journals U.S. War Powers and the Potential Benefits of Comparativism

2019 ◽  
pp. 752-770
Author(s):  
Curtis A. Bradley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Military Force ◽  
War Powers ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Legal Methodology

This chapter describes U.S. law governing the use of military force, and it considers the potential value of comparative study of how different countries regulate the issue. As the chapter notes, there is significant uncertainty and debate in the United States over the distribution of authority concerning the use of force—in particular, over whether and to what extent military actions must be authorized by Congress. Because courts in the modern era have generally declined to review the legality of military actions, disputes over this issue have had to be resolved, as a practical matter, through the political process. For those who believe that it is important to have legislative involvement in decisions to use force, the political process has not proven to be satisfactory: presidents have often used military force without obtaining congressional approval, and Congress generally has done little to resist such presidential unilateralism. The United States is not the only country to struggle with regulating the domestic authority to use military force. This issue of foreign relations law is common to constitutional democracies, and nations vary substantially in how they have addressed it. Comparative study of such approaches should be of inherent interest to scholars and students, including those trying to better understand the U.S. approach. Whether and to what extent such study should also inform the interpretation or revision of U.S. law presents a more complicated set of questions that are affected in part by one’s legal methodology and how the comparative materials are being invoked.

Constitutional War Initiation and the Obama Presidency

2016 ◽  
Vol 110 (4) ◽  
pp. 701-717 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Ramsey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Presidential Candidate ◽  
Military Force ◽  
President Obama ◽  
War Powers ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
Basic Proposition ◽  
The U.S

In 2007, presidential candidate Barack Obama argued that the U.S. president did not have independent constitutional authority to use military force except in response to an actual or imminent attack on the United States. Since 2008, President Obama has directed the use of U.S. military force in at least seven countries (Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia). Critics find inconsistency in these positions, contending that the Obama presidency will be remembered for expansion of the presidency's war powers. But when the administration's record is closely examined, these claims seem overstated. At least with regard to war initiation, the Obama presidency need not be regarded as materially enhancing the president's constitutional powers.This assessment begins by establishing two baselines. First, most war powers scholars agree that under the Constitution's original meaning, Congress’ power to “declare War” required the president to seek congressional approval prior to initiating war. This constitutional command had substantial grey areas, including responses to threats and attacks, relations with non-state actors, and low-level hostilities. Nonetheless, the basic proposition stated by candidate Obama appears well founded both in the Constitution's text itself and in early postratification practice. Second, in the modern (post-Vietnam War) era, most scholars agree that the practice has changed somewhat, with presidents asserting an expanded independent authority over uses of military force. This essay agrees with that description, although it contends that the change in actual practice is less dramatic than commentary sometimes claims.

Oscar Arias and the Treaty of Esquipulas

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip Travis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Costa Rica ◽  
Central America ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Military Policy ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Central Americans ◽  
Proxy War

Throughout the 1980s, Central America was wracked by conflict. El Salvador faced a guerrilla insurgency, Guatemala’s long conflict festered, and Nicaragua faced a continually escalating U.S.-led proxy war that used fighters, loosely referred to as the Contras, to wage war on the Nicaraguan government through cross-border raids that implicated Costa Rica and Honduras in persistent violations of sovereignty. The Treaty of Esquipulas, spearheaded by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez, ended these conflicts and brought stability to the region. The Treaty of Esquipulas stands as one of the most significant and understudied peace agreements of the late Cold War. These accords ran counter to the will of the more powerful United States, which throughout the 1980s had sought to use military force as the key to achieving regime change in Nicaragua. The United States policy of supporting guerrillas that waged a war of regime change in Nicaragua fanned the flames of conflict and destabilized the region. Esquipulas undermined this destructive policy. For the first time, the small nations of Central America, so long considered the imperial servants of the United States, thwarted an aggressive U.S. military policy. Through intense diplomatic meetings, and in the wake of the controversy that developed from the Iran–Contra scandal, President Arias of Costa Rica succeeded in creating a peace agreement for Central Americans and authored by Central Americans. The Esquipulas accords were a blanket repudiation of the near decade-long Contra war policy of the United States. Central America created diplomatic unity and facilitated a successful opposition to the military policy of its more powerful neighbor. This agreement was a great triumph of peace and diplomacy created in the face of what seemed like overwhelming odds.

scholarly journals U.S. Drone Strike in Iraq Kills Iranian Military Leader Qasem Soleimani

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-323
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nuclear Fuel ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Military Leader ◽  
Comprehensive Plan ◽  
International Airport ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Trump Administration

On January 3, 2020, the U.S. military conducted a drone strike near Baghdad International Airport that killed Qasem Soleimani, the leader within the Iranian military of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The Trump administration initially appeared to justify the strike as an effort to deter imminent attacks on U.S. embassies and personnel, but later insisted that Iran's actions in the months leading up to the strike triggered the U.S. right to self-defense. Domestically, the Trump administration claimed the authority to carry out the strike based on both the president's inherent constitutional powers and the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq passed by Congress in 2002. In the aftermath of the strike, Iraq voted to expel U.S. troops from its territory, and Iran conducted a missile strike on American bases in Iraq. Iran also announced that it would cease to observe limits on its production of nuclear fuel—a core tenet of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), from which the United States withdrew in 2018.

10 War Powers and the War on Terrorism

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley Curtis A
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
War On Terrorism ◽  
Targeted Killing ◽  
War Powers ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Geneva Conventions ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
The U.S

This chapter considers the relevance of international law within the U.S. legal system to the United States’ initiation and conduct of war. After briefly reviewing some of the most relevant treaties relating to war and warfare, the chapter considers the Constitution’s distribution of war authority between Congress and the President. It then discusses how international law, including the provisions in the UN Charter relating to the authority of the Security Council, as well as collective self-defense treaties, might affect the President’s war authority. The chapter then shifts to the “war on terrorism” and discusses the relevance of international law, including the Geneva Conventions, to issues concerning the scope of the military’s detention authority in that conflict, with particular reference to the Supreme Court’s 2004 decision in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. International law and other issues relating to the use of military commissions to try terrorist suspects are also considered. The chapter concludes by discussing legal debates relating to coercive interrogation and targeted killing.

Black Nationalism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Newman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Black Women ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Black Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Nationalism ◽  
Malcolm X ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Black Nationalist

The popular media often illustrate black nationalism with images of Malcolm X and black leather-jacketed, Afro-wearing, armed Black Panthers in the 1960s, and, in later decades, Louis Farrakhan and hip-hop artists such as Public Enemy. Although historians disagree about black nationalism’s composition and origins, they argue that it has a long pedigree in American history, traceable at least to the first half of the 19th century, if not earlier. While men were most often black nationalism’s public exponents, and some emphasized manhood and female subordination, black nationalism also appealed to many black women, some of whom also exercised leadership and organizational skills in its service. Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican, led the first mass black nationalist organization in the United States, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), during the 1920s. Like 19th-century black nationalists, Garvey advocated an independent state for people of African descent, black uplift, and the “civilizing” of Africa. Although not original to him, his emphasis on the right to self-defense, independent black economic development, and pride in African history boosted the UNIA’s popularity. Garvey fell victim to state oppression in the United States, but some former Garveyites joined the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA) and probably also the Nation of Islam (NOI), both of which rejected Christianity, identified blacks as Asiatics, and adopted particularist interpretations of Islam. In the 1950s and 1960s, Malcolm X, the charismatic son of Garveyite parents, became the Nation’s chief recruiter. Personal differences with Elijah Muhammad, the Nation’s leader since the 1930s, eventually led to Malcolm X’s departure in 1964. Although he was assassinated in 1965, Malcolm X’s calls for armed self-defense, self-determination and black pride, and identification with anticolonial struggles heavily influenced Black Power advocates. Some civil rights organizations and workers, who were disillusioned by intransigent white racism and distrustful of white liberals, championed Black Power, which was multifaceted and sometimes more reformist than nationalist. In the early 1990s, polls suggested that black nationalist ideas were more popular than during their supposed heyday in the late 1960s, before internal dissension and state repression undermined many Black Power groups.

scholarly journals International Law in the US Legal System

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley Curtis A
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Sovereign Immunity ◽  
War Powers ◽  
Jus Cogens ◽  
The U.S

International Law in the U.S. Legal System provides a wide-ranging overview of how international law intersects with the domestic legal system of the United States, and points out various unresolved issues and areas of controversy. Curtis Bradley explains the structure of the U.S. legal system and the various separation of powers and federalism considerations implicated by this structure, especially as these considerations relate to the conduct of foreign affairs. Against this backdrop, he covers all of the principal forms of international law: treaties, executive agreements, decisions and orders of international institutions, customary international law, and jus cogens norms. He also explores a number of issues that are implicated by the intersection of U.S. law and international law, such as treaty withdrawal, foreign sovereign immunity, international human rights litigation, war powers, extradition, and extraterritoriality. This book highlights recent decisions and events relating to the topic, including various actions taken during the Trump administration, while also taking into account relevant historical materials, including materials relating to the U.S. Constitutional Founding. Written by one of the most cited international law scholars in the United States, the book is a resource for lawyers, law students, legal scholars, and judges from around the world.

scholarly journals Democracy and Vigilantism: The Case of Michoacán, Mexico

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 17-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerjes Aguirre Ochoa ◽  
Casimiro Leco Tomas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
Municipal Government ◽  
Institutional Quality ◽  
The United States ◽  
High Demand ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Organized Crime Groups

The so-called self-defense forces in Mexico must be seen as a form of vigilantism generated by an incipient process of democratization that has not produced the institutional quality necessary to contain the activity of organized crime groups driven, essentially, by the high demand for drugs in the United States. Our qualitative analysis of Mexico’s Tierra Caliente (‘Hotlands’) revealed profound processes of institutional deterioration in politics and the economy that have created conditions ripe for vigilantism. In the absence of substantial improvements in the quality of Mexico’s democracy, especially at the levels of state and municipal government, the emergence of other forms of vigilantism and ongoing violence are foreseeable.

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