scholarly journals The U.S. Election Hacks, Cybersecurity, and International Law

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 337-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
David P. Fidler

In October 2016, the United States accused Russia of hacking political organizations involved in the U.S. elections and leaking pilfered information to influence the outcome. In December, President Obama imposed sanctions for the hacking. This incident damaged President Obama's cybersecurity legacy. The “hack and leak” campaign targeted American self-government—a challenge to his administration's promotion of democracy in cyberspace. It created problems for the president's emphasis on international law and norms as “rules of the road” for cybersecurity. The episode exposed failures in his attempts to make deterrence an important instrument of U.S. cybersecurity.

Author(s):  
Karen Knop

The two starting points for this chapter are that fields of law are inventions, and that fields matter as analytical frames. All legal systems deal with foreign relations issues, but few have a field of “foreign relations law.” As the best-stocked cabinet of issues and ideas, U.S. foreign relations law would be likely to generate the field elsewhere in the process of comparison. But some scholars, particularly outside the United States, see the nationalist or sovereigntist strains of the U.S. field, and perhaps even just its use as a template, as demoting international law. The chapter begins by asking whether this apprehension can be alleviated by using international law or an existing comparative law field to inventory the foreign relations issues to be compared. Finding neither sufficient, it turns to the U.S. field as an initial frame and sketches three types of anxieties that the U.S. experience has raised or might raise for international law. The chapter concludes by suggesting how Campbell McLachlan’s allocative conception of foreign relations law might be adapted so as to turn such anxieties about international law into opportunities.


Author(s):  
Bradley Curtis A

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.


Author(s):  
Aryeh Neier

This chapter focuses on the two sources of international law: custom and treaties. Customary international law is the term used to describe rules that are so widely accepted and so deeply held that they help to define what it means to belong to a civilized society. The question of whether customary international law is binding on the United States came before the U.S. Supreme Court as long ago as 1900 in a case called Paquete Habana. Whereas treaty law often covers the same ground as customary international law. Torture is forbidden by customary international law, for example, and prohibitions against torture are also set forth in several multilateral treaties. The effect is to reinforce recognition that a particular norm set forth in a treaty has the status of customary law.


Author(s):  
Aryeh Neier

This chapter discusses custom and treaties as the two sources of international law. It explains the customary international law as the term used to describe rules that are widely accepted and deeply held and are used to define what it means to belong to a civilized society. It also recounts the case called “Paquete Habana” in the U.S. Supreme Court that addresses the question of whether customary international law is binding on the United States. The chapter talks about the treaty law or conventional law as the source of multilateral conventions that often covers the same ground as customary international law. It analyzes the prohibitions against “torture” that are set forth in several multilateral treaties and reinforce recognition that a particular norm set forth in a treaty has the status of customary law.


Worldview ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 19 (9) ◽  
pp. 4-9
Author(s):  
Mark A. Bruzonsky

The real crunch for Israel will probably come during 1977 if Ford is elected—it will be delayed by only a few months if a Democratic candidate wins.” So writes Wolf Blitzer, editor of the “Jewish lobby's” Washington publication Near East Report, in a recent issue of the Jerusalem Post.With the same sense of urgency Abba Eban insists that “Time is of the essence, and unhappily for us, time is running out. We ought to grasp the central issues now and involve the United States in resolving them.” He and a growing number of his colleagues fear that should Israel not choose to “cooperate” with the U.S., the Americans might run right over Israel on the road to Geneva and some form of imposed settlement.


2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 123-127
Author(s):  
Stephen Pomper

We are having this conversation now because of the April 7 strikes on the Shayrat Airfield in Syria, but the question of how one justifies forcible measures in the context of a humanitarian emergency, and in the face of a deadlocked Security Council, is one that deserves urgent attention beyond the context of any single event. Progress toward answering this question has, however, been mired in a long-standing debate between those who believe that there is no credible international law justification for humanitarian intervention—and that the U.S. government should instead justify interventions like those taken at Kosovo and Shayrat as morally “legitimate”—and those who believe a legal justification can and should be put forward. I am very much in the latter camp and will use my time now to explain how I arrived at this position as a policy and as a legal matter by looking at three questions: the first question is whether legal justification is the direction that the United States should go in as a matter of policy. The second question is whether legal justification is credibly available as a matter of international law. The third question (which assumes the answer to the first and second is yes) is how to go about articulating and disseminating such a justification. Let me take these in order.


1977 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adolf Sprudzs

Among the many old and new actors on the international stage of nations the United States is one of the most active and most important. The U.S. is a member of most existing intergovernmental organizations, participates in hundreds upon hundreds of international conferences and meetings every year and, in conducting her bilateral and multilateral relations with the other members of the community of nations, contributes very substantially to the development of contemporary international law. The Government of the United States has a policy of promptly informing the public about developments in its relations with other countries through a number of documentary publication, issued by the Department of State


1943 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 1014-1026
Author(s):  
Carl J. Friedrich ◽  
Evelyn Sternberg

Congress established a policy for wartime radio under Section 606 of the Communications Act of 1934 when it gave the President power to take over the entire radio industry in time of war or national emergency. He took advantage of this in September, 1940, when by an executive order he created the Board of War Communications (previously the Defense Communications Board). In the 1934 act, too, he was given wide authority to suspend the FCC rules and to close stations or to use them as he saw fit. In September, 1939, when a state of “limited national emergency” was declared, there was speculation as to the effect that this section would have on the broadcasting industry. Certain Congressmen showed an inclination to back down from the principle of broad Presidential powers over radio. Representative Ditter's bill of 1940, enthusiastically supported by the broadcasting industry, was intended to curb the wide powers the Communications Act had conferred upon the President. This bill, never acted upon, would have added a provision that no transmitter might be confiscated or silenced because of the “character or contents of any program” or in order to permit the government to engage in or control broadcasting, except upon proclamation by the President that the United States was actually at war.Previously, Congress had enacted some legislation which is pertinent to the war. In 1932, for example, a law was passed that licenses should be issued to qualified United States citizens only, and in 1941, by a new act, the Commission was enabled to consider the character and capacity of potential licensees in order to guard against “subversive” individuals.


1998 ◽  
Vol 92 (3) ◽  
pp. 539-548 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rex J. Zedalis

On March 7, 1995, Conoco oil company of Houston, Texas, announced that it had entered into a contract with Iran to have a Netherlands-based affiliate assist in the development of the Sirri Island oil field. In response, the Clinton administration issued Executive Order No. 12,957, prohibiting participation by U.S. entities in the development of Iranian petroleum resources. Eventually, Conoco withdrew from its contract, but in early May of 1995 the administration stepped up its pressure on Iran by issuing Executive Order No. 12,959, prohibiting U.S. entities from using foreign entities they owned or controlled to make investments in or conduct trade transactions with Iran. On July 13 of that year, the French oil company Total S.A. entered into an agreement with Iran to replace Conoco in developing the Sirri Island field, and over the next several months Iran struck nearly a dozen petroleum development agreements worth in excess of $50 million each with other foreign oil companies. Within a couple of months, both Houses of the U.S. Congress took up consideration of proposals to complicate Iran’s ability to develop its hydrocarbon resources. By the end of 1995, the proposals, which even extended to wholly foreign entities organized and operating outside the United States, had come to include Libya as well. Final passage of one of the proposals, specifically, H.R. 3107, took place in the Senate and the House in July 1996. It was signed into law as the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) on August 5.


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