With its decision last week to strike down the Bush Administration’s unilateral creation of military tribunals for trying detainees, the Supreme Court highlighted and reinforced the rule of law in the conduct of military operations.
Several recent publications provide rich background on military law.
The 2006 edition of the “Operational Law Handbook” (pdf) published by the Army Judge Advocate General is “a ‘how to’ guide for Judge Advocates practicing operational law. It provides references and describes tactics and techniques for the practice of operational law.”
The Handbook covers the gamut of issues that arise in the field, from the Law of War to intelligence-related law to detainee operations.
See “Operational Law Handbook (2006),” Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School (598 pages, 3.7 MB).
U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and the “war on terrorism” have raised a variety of novel legal issues, according to a 2004 study performed for the Army on “legal lessons learned.”
“Whether determining the applicability of the law of armed conflict to non-state terrorist actors, applying traditional and new fiscal authorities to a military occupation, or assisting in the development of rules of engagement (ROE) for an enemy that blended into civilian populations, JAs [judge advocates] and paralegals wrestled with cutting-edge legal issues during OEF [Operation Enduring Freedom] and OIF [Operation Iraqi Freedom].”
See “Legal Lessons Learned From Afghanistan and Iraq: Volume 1, Major Combat Operations,” Center for Law and Military Operations, 1 August 2004 (454 pages, 7.1 MB PDF).
Volume 2 of that study has recently been made public. See “Legal Lessons Learned From Afghanistan and Iraq: Volume 2, Full Spectrum Operations,” Center for Law and Military Operations, September 2005 (368 pages, 3.3 MB PDF).
Secrecy News is honored to be a recipient of the 2006 Public Access to Government Information award from the American Association of Law Libraries.
Familiar semiconductor policy approaches – export controls and subsidies – are inadequate alone to prevent reliance on Chinese-made legacy chips. Washington and its allies will instead have to turn to the old-fashioned, disruptive tools of trade defense in the face of a challenge of this scale.
The Wildfire Intelligence Center would bring together expertise at all levels of government to give our firefighters and first responders access to cutting-edge tools and the decision support they need to confront this growing crisis.
DOE is already very well set up to pursue an energy dominance agenda for America. There’s simply no need to waste time conducting a large-scale agency reorganization.
FAS today released permitting policy recommendations to improve talent and technology in the federal permitting process. These recommendations will address the sometimes years-long bottlenecks that prevent implementation of crucial projects, from energy to transportation.