drones

What Role and Rules for Canada’s Armed Drones?

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predator-firing-missile_previewI have published a short essay, “What Role and Rules for Canada’s Armed Drones,” in the Canadian Global Affairs Institute: Policy Perspectives, Dec. 23, 2018. Here is the abstract:

The Canadian government announced in June 2017 that it was planning to purchase and deploy armed drones. Yet to date it has provided virtually no information on how and for what purpose such armed drones would be used, beyond anodyne comments that they would be used like any other conventional weapon. However, conventional weapons have varying capabilities and purposes, and implicate international law in different ways as a result. Armed drones have been primarily used for the purpose of targeted killing, in ways that have raised significant legal questions and triggered claims of excessive civilian deaths. Canadians should be concerned about how, for what purpose, and according to what limitations the government plans to deploy armed drones. Other countries have provided greater transparency than Canada regarding the law and policy framework governing the use of armed drones. This short essay reviews how armed drones have been used elsewhere, explains the significant legal issues that are implicated by the different ways in which drones have been used and what that implies for the role of Canadian armed drones. It suggests that strict, clear and publicly disclosed limits be placed on drone use to ensure compliance with Canada’s international law obligations.

The Assumptions of Koh’s Transnational Legal Process as Counter-Strategy

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(Published in Opinio Juris, Feb. 26, 2018).

Harold-Presenting.1.webThis post will bring to a close the formal part of the virtual symposium on Harold Koh’s recent article The Trump Administration and International Law. As moderator, I would like to begin by thanking all those who contributed (including a couple of announced contributors who we unfortunately lost along the way to illness and crises). I think that each of the essays has raised interesting and important questions and issues. In closing, I would like to try to explore the common themes raised in the essays, and suggest that they all relate to a potential paradox in transnational legal process, and a weakness in its utility as a counter-strategy, that Harold may want to address as he expands the article into a book.

Recap

To briefly re-cap the symposium, Harold’s article argued that actors inside and outside of the U.S. government are, and should be, leveraging the features of transnational legal process as a counterstrategy aimed at preventing the Trump Administration from disrupting international law and postwar Kantian global order. There was general agreement with Harold’s analysis and criticism of the Trump Administration, and the threats it poses for international law and its institutions. And all applauded the effort to find ways to meet those threats. But each offered insights and critiques regarding different aspects of Harold’s account of transnational legal process, and its utility as a counter-strategy against threat Trump poses.

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