Peace & security at home

As reviewed in a post yesterday, the United States National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security amounts to an impressive promise to enhance human security around the world. (photo credit)
Released in mid-December, the Plan addressed, among many other things, domestic violence and violence based on sex or gender. It stated (pp. 6-7):

'When countries are not experiencing active conflict, evidence shows that violence against women can be a primary indicator of a nation's stability, security, and propensity toward internal or external conflict. This indicator may be as telling as levels of democracy or wealth.
'No society can restore peace or stability when its population lives in daily fear of rape or other sexual assault -- or when the perpetrators are not held accountable for their actions. ... The safety of women and their families must be a top priority for security efforts around the world.'

The concerns are laudable. Yet the focus, in this passage and in similar ones to be found in many U.S. news stories, unsettles. Often they leave the reader with the impression that such violence is an other, something that occurs elsewhere, that is to be fought elsewhere.
Statistics indicate otherwise.
A Centers for Disease Control report -- published the same week as the National Action Plan -- said that 1 of every 4 American women surveyed said "they were violently attacked by their husbands or boyfriends," and 1 in 5 called themselves victims of rape or attempted rape. Half in the latter group said they were girls under 17 when assailed.
Though an Associated Press account termed those numbers "startling," in fact they're consistent with earlier statistics about college campuses and the military.
In short, they indicate that the United States is not to be excluded from statements like this one, in a 2000 Johns Hopkins study, reprinted at p. xi of Alice Edwards' new book:

'Around the world at least one woman in every three has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime.'

Something else lies hidden in the passage of the U.S. plan quoted at top. Its reference to women's "families" may be a tacit acknowledgment that males too can be vulnerable. Numbers are extremely hard to come by. Yet anecdotal evidence -- in the United States (here, here) and abroad (¶¶ 66-67 here) -- deserves consideration.
Inclusion of such issues of human rights at home well might strengthen every nation's action plan on peace and security.

SG confesses 1 detention error

The United States' top advocate before the Supreme Court has, as he put it, made a "Confession of Error" respecting his office's long-ago support of a detention policy.
In a Friday post on the blog of the Department of Justice, Neal Katyal, Acting Solicitor General since May 17 of last year, praised the roles that his predecessors played "in advancing civil rights." Katyal then continued:

But it is also important to remember the mistakes.

The mistake he had in mind:

the Solicitor General’s defense of the forced relocation and internment of Japanese-American during World War II.

Writing 68 years and 10 days after Solicitor General Charles H. Fahy presented oral argument in the 1st internment case to reach the Supreme Court, Hirabayashi v. United States, Katyal recalled that

the Solicitor General had learned of a key intelligence report that undermined the rationale behind the internment. The Ringle Report, from the Office of Naval Intelligence, found that only a small percentage of Japanese Americans posed a potential security threat, and that the most dangerous were already known or in custody. But the Solicitor General did not inform the Court of the report, despite warnings from Department of Justice attorneys that failing to alert the Court 'might approximate the suppression of evidence.' Instead, he argued that it was impossible to segregate loyal Japanese Americans from disloyal ones. Nor did he inform the Court that a key set of allegations used to justify the internment, that Japanese Americans were using radio transmitters to communicate with enemy submarines off the West Coast, had been discredited by the FBI and FCC. And to make matters worse, he relied on gross generalizations about Japanese Americans, such as that they were disloyal and motivated by 'racial solidarity.'

Acting Solicitor General Katyal noted that "it took nearly a half century for courts to overturn" the mid-1940s upholding of convictions against two U.S. born young men, Gordon Hirabayashi and the litigant in a subsequent case, Fred Korematsu (prior posts). Katyal stressed one such court's laying of blame on the office that Katyal now holds:

One court decision in the 1980s that did so highlighted the role played by the Solicitor General, The court thought it unlikely that the Supreme Court would have ruled the same way had the Solicitor General exhibited complete candor.

Though the convictions have been set aside, the balancing of individual security and national security that the Court established in the 2 cases has not been overruled. Katyal, who'd represented Salim Ahmed Hamdan in challenging trial at Guantánamo, said of the lingering precedents in Hirabayashi and Korematsu:

[T]hose decisions still stand today as a reminder of the mistakes of that era.

Katyal concluded that

our Office takes this history as an important reminder that the 'special credence' the Solicitor General enjoys before the Supreme Court requires great responsibility and a duty of absolute candor in our representations to the Court.

From the standpoint of transitional justice, Katyal's statement constitutes an admission of wrongdoing by one of many responsible governmental entities. It joins:
►Proclamation 4417, Confirming the Termination of the Executive Order Authorizing Japanese-American Internment During World War II (1976), in which President Gerald R. Ford declared

not only was that evacuation wrong, but Japanese-Americans were and are loyal Americans.

► The Civil Liberties Act passed by Congress and signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988. The statute, which accorded each internee about $20,000 in reparations, began with these words:

The Congress recognizes that, as described in the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, a grave injustice was done to both citizens and permanent residents of Japanese ancestry by the evacuation, relocation, and internment of civilians during World War II.

From the standpoint of contemporary justice, Katyal's statement begs comparison with ongoing detention controversies.
Yesterday, "[m]aking it eight in a row, the Court turn[ed] down the last of the Guantanamo Bay appeals it had considered this Term," as SCOTUSblog's Lyle Denniston wrote. The Office of the Solicitor General (with Katyal recusing himself) argued against the cert. petition filed by former child soldier Omar Khadr. The Office -- which is likely soon to be headed by nominee Donald Verilli -- had done the same in the 7 cases that preceded Khadr v. Obama.

(credit top right image of DOJ seal; credit for May 1942 photo above left, made by Dorothea Lange for the War Relocation Authority of the U.S.Department of the Interior, of Mochida family members as they awaited government-ordered transfer from their home in California; credit for bottom right photo of Camp Delta detention center at Guantánamo; hat tip to Kevin R. Johnson, whose ImmigrationProf blog post on this issue is here)

Word(s) up

Those of us who've labored at international law learned long ago that the just about the last place to find the meaning of terms in our field was the standard domestic reference.
Not at any more: Black's Law Dictionary has gone global.
That's the takeaway from the Autumn 2009 edition of The Green Bag, now celebrating its 13th year as "an entertaining journal of law."* Adjudging the newest edition of Black's "a product of its time," an article entitled "Timely Definitions" cites 8 "new entries" as cases in point.
A definition in 1 of the 8 entries alludes to the globalized nature of contemporary practice, for it traces a term not obviously international -- "advance-fee fraud" -- to its "believed" origins in Nigeria.
Fully 4 of the remaining 7 terms deal specifically with matters of interest to specialists in international or foreign relations law. These indeed reflect our times, ranging from "conflict diamond" to "national-security letter" to "waterboarding."
The 4th term in this latter group?

complementarity principle. International law. The doctrine that a country with control of a person accused of violating international criminal law has the jurisdiction to charge and try a person. · Because the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court is complementary to the criminal jurisdiction of countries, that tribunal can assert jurisdiction over the accused person only if the country is unable or unwilling to undertake a genuine investigation and prosecution. – Sometimes shortened to complementarity.

This new entry, in particular, underscores that lawyers need to know a lot about law's operation at inter- as well as -national levels.

* To which yours truly was pleased to have contributed "Under Deconstruction: International Criminal Law in a Postmodern World," 3 Green Bag 2d 369 (2000).

Work On! NatSec Law @ UT Law

(Work On! is an occasional item about workshops, roundtables, and other fora for scholarship-presentation-without-publication) Proposals for papers on national security law are being sought for the 3rd annual National Security Law Junior Faculty Workshop, to be held April 1 and 2, 2010, at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, University of Texas School of Law, Austin, cosponsor along with the International Committee of the Red Cross. Also participating in the workshop are our colleagues, Texas Law Professor Robert M. Chesney and South Texas Law Professor Geoffrey S. Corn, as well as the Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School and the U.S. Army.
Featured in addition to presentation and discussion of works-in-progress will be training in international humanitarian law.
Abstracts or manuscripts of unpublished papers should be sent to Chesney at rchesney@law.utexas.edu. Deadline is February 1; details here.

Experts at Law: War & conflict, ICL & IHL

(One in a series on Experts at Law)

Inspired by Diane Marie Amann's post on female international law scholars with expertise in the field of national security law, IntLawGrrls has created a new series entitled Experts at Law. Organized by field of expertise, this series of posts aims to provide easily accessible information to conference organizers, media, and others who seek expert opinions on a variety of subjects while ensuring gender balance. The list below provides institutional affiliations for as well as links to the bios and publications of and blog posts by or about our Experts at Law, who are comprised of IntLawGrrls bloggers, guests, and alumnae and presented in alphabetical order. Some offer specific areas of expertise within the broader topic presented.
If you'd like to find this series again in the future, it's easy -- just scroll down the page until you find the "IntLawGrrls series" menu on the right, and click on "Experts at Law."
Today's list focuses on female international law scholars with expertise in areas of law relating to war and conflict, including international criminal law, international humanitarian law, national security law, terrorism, and transitional justice. If you seek an expert in another field of international law, not to worry -- additional areas of expertise will be listed in posts over the next two weeks.

International criminal law and transitional justice
Diane Marie Amann, Univ. of California at Davis, (publications, blogs): international and transnational criminal justice
Elena Baylis, Univ. of Pittsburgh, (publications, blogs): post-conflict justice
Doris Buss, Carleton Univ., Ottawa (publications, blogs)
Margaret deGuzman, Temple Univ., Philadelphia, (publications, blogs)
Chimene Keitner, Univ. of California, Hastings (publications, blogs)
Linda M. Keller, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, San Diego, (publications, blogs)
Fiona de Londras, Univ. College Dublin, (publications, blogs): feminist critiques of international criminal tribunals
Carmen Marquez-Carrasco, Univ. of Seville, (publications, blogs): the crime of aggression, crimes against humanity, history of international criminal law, the International Criminal Court, international criminal jurisdictions, reparations, universal jurisdiction
Valerie Oosterveld, Univ. of Western Ontario, (publications, blogs): gender issues in international criminal justice
Noëlle Quénivet, Bristol Law School, (publications, blogs): genocide, war crimes
Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Temple Univ., Philadelphia, (publications, blogs): transitional justice
Susan Harris Rimmer, Australian National Univ., (publications, blogs): feminist theory and transitional justice
Naomi Roht-Arriaza, Univ. of California, Hastings (publications, blogs): post-conflict and transitional justice, universal jurisdiction
Susana SaCouto, War Crimes Research Office, American Univ., Washington DC (publications, blogs): international criminal tribunals
Amy Senier, Foley, Hoag LLP, Boston, (publications, blogs): transitional justice
Beth Van Schaack, Santa Clara Univ., (publications, blogs)

International humanitarian law
Diane Marie Amann, Univ. of California at Davis, (publications, blogs)
Stephanie Farrior, Vermont Law School, (publications, blogs)
Carmen Marquez-Carrasco, Univ. of Seville, (publications, blogs): gender and IHL, humanitarian assistance
Monica Hakimi, Univ. of Michigan, (publications, blogs)
Noëlle Quénivet, Bristol Law School, (publications, blogs)
Susan Harris Rimmer Australian National Univ., (publications, blogs)
Beth Van Schaack, Santa Clara Univ., (publications, blogs)

National security and terrorism
See also Diane Marie Amann's list of experts here
Diane Marie Amann, Univ. of California at Davis, (publications, blogs)
Elena Baylis, Univ. of Pittsburgh, (publications, blogs): the "war on terror"
Karima Bennoune, Rutgers-Newark, (publications, blogs): terrorism
Monica Hakimi, Univ. of Michigan, (publications, blogs): the "war on terror" including detentions, mistreatment, questions on the applicable (U.S. and international) law, and renditions
Kristine A. Huskey, Univ. of Texas, (publications, blogs): national security law, the "war on terror"
Fiona de Londras, Univ. College Dublin, (publications, blogs): terrorism and counter-terrorism
Susan Harris Rimmer Australian National Univ., (publications, blogs): rights-based approaches to counter-terrorism law
Beth Van Schaack, Santa Clara Univ., (publications, blogs): the "war on terror"

War and conflict
Elena Baylis, Univ. of Pittsburgh, (publications, blogs): ethnic conflict and minority rights
Karima Bennoune, Rutgers-Newark, (publications, blogs): armed conflict, child soldiers, religious extremism
Doris Buss, Carleton Univ., Ottawa (publications, blogs): rape and sexual violence against women in conflict settings
Naomi Cahn, George Washington Univ., (publications, blogs): child soldiers, disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration, post-conflict transition
Monica Hakimi, Univ. of Michigan, (publications, blogs): armed conflict
Kristine A. Huskey, Univ. of Texas, (publications, blogs): United Nations draft convention regarding mercenaries, the use of private military/security companies in armed conflict
Carmen Marquez-Carrasco, Univ. of Seville, (publications, blogs): humanitarian intervention, prohibition on the use of force, Security Council powers and practice, right to self-defense
Noëlle Quénivet, Bristol Law School, (publications, blogs): girl soldiers, peacekeeping operations, rape and sexual violence against women in conflict settings, right to self defense

Write On! National security law workshop

(Write On! is an occasional item about notable calls for papers.)

Austin, Texas, will be the site of the 2nd annual National Security Law Junior Faculty Workshop, to be held on March 12 and 13, 2009. (Among the presenters at the inaugural workshop, held last year at Wake Forest, was IntLawGrrls' own Beth Hillman.)

This year's workshop will combine discussion of works-in-progress with training in the law of war, the latter provided by instructors from the International Committee of the Red Cross and the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General School.

For details on this year's workshop, link to the "here" details at this post. For questions, contact Robert M. Chesney at rchesney@law.utexas.edu.

Anyone is welcome to attend, and all are welcome to submit a paper for consideration. The deadline for submitting a paper or abstract for consideration is January 15, 2009.

Welcome to the blogosphere

Check out Security Law Brief, a new blog on matters of -- you guessed it -- national security.
SLB's sponsored by the Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law in Washington, D.C. It's updated daily, and has lots of short-and-snappy items to keep you on top of issues in the field. Today it joins IntLawGrrls' other favorite sites in the "connections" list at right.
Contributors, all affiliated with Georgetown, are: Nadia Asancheyev, Tim Bass, David Cole, Justin Florence, Matthew Gerke, Neal Katyal, David Koplow , Marty Lederman (prior IntLawGrrls post), David Luban (prior post), and Annamartine Salick.

Heartfelt welcome!

Write On! "National Security Law Advice"

(Write On! is an occasional item about notable calls for papers.) The Section on National Security Law of the Association of American Law Schools is seeking papers to fill out the panel discussion, entitled "National Security Law Advice to the New Administration," that it will sponsors at AALS' January 2009 annual meeting in San Diego, California.
Section Chair and Syracuse Law Professor William C. Banks invites a variety of essay- and article-length treatments of the subject of advice. For instance, an author might:
► Focus on a discrete ongoing problem, such as detention and trial of accused terrorists or reform of surveillance laws;
► Offer theoretical or historical perspectives;
► Develop recommendations concerning humanitarian intervention or measures to ensure human security; or
► Engage in a memorandum-style set of recommendations across a range of national security law problems.
The author of the selected paper will join already-confirmed panelists -- Pacific McGeorge Law Dean Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, Yale Law Dean Harold Hongju Koh, and Creighton Law Professor and Section Chair-Elect Michael J. Kelly -- in a discussion to take place from 8:30-10:15 a.m. on Thursday, January 8, 2009. The selected paper also will be published, in short form in the National Security Law Report, the periodical of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security, and in full length, subject to the journal's final approval, in the Journal of National Security Law & Policy.
Submissions should include a cover letter confirming willingness to join the panel (with home-institution funding), a c.v., and either an abstract-with-outline or a draft article. E-mail submissions to Banks at wcbanks@law.syr.edu (with documents attached in Word, WordPerfect, or PDF) no later than August 15, 2008.

Work On! National security law

(Work On! is an occasional item about workshops, roundtables, and other fora for scholarship-presentation-without-publication) A host of scholarly subjects now fall within "the national security law umbrella" -- jus ad bellum and jus in bello, of course, but also intersections between international humanitarian law and international human rights law, interactions among national, regional, and international legal regimes, overlaps among powers of various governmental branches, and, even more broadly, the degree to which individual human security aids or undermines collective national security. Scholars working in these areas (particularly though not exclusively "junior" scholars) are invited to take part in a National Security Law Works-in-Progress Workshop on May 23, 2008, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Cosponsors include Wake Forest University School of Law, national security law centers at Duke University and the University of Virginia, the Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School, and the Journal of National Security Law & Policy.

Papers, or at the very least, abstracts, should be submitted by the April 4 deadline to our colleague Bobby Chesney at robert.chesney@wfu.edu. They'll then be reviewed by officers of the National Security Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools.

Details here on the call for works-in-progress and the workshop, which is open to presenters and nonpresenters alike.

Go On! "Gender & Class: Collective Voices"

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia of interest) The upcoming annual meeting in New York of the Association of American Law Schools will kick off this year with a January 3, 2008, program that promises to be of particular interest to many readers. Entitled "Gender and Class: Voices from the Collective," it's an all-day exploration of issues like incorporation of class issues into discussions on gender-based inequality; intersections vel non of class subordination with those of race, gender, and sexual orientation; and thoughts about theorizing inequality. Speakers include 3 IntLawGrrls: Hari M. Osofsky's part of the panel on "Globalization," Elizabeth Hillman and yours truly, the panel on "National Security." Other topics include "Children," "Work and Care," "Work and Institutions," "Criminalization," "The State," and "Family." Details here; hope to see you there.

An Agora that'd make the men of ancient Athens proud (but not in a good way)

The latest edition of the American Journal of International Law just found its way here. Among its excellent contents is part 2 of an Agora -- AJIL's term for an on-paper-only symposium about a topical topic -- on military commissions in our post-9/11 world.
"Agora," of course, is the Greek word for the marketplaces, like the one at right, where Socrates, Plato, and other men of intellect conducted public discourse. It's perhaps too apt a term here:
Couldn't help noticing that out of all the articles AJIL published -- 7 total in part 1 and part 2 -- not 1 was written by a woman.
That couldn't have been for lack of 1 able to take on the task. The notion that women do not think and work and write on issues critical to national security is, as posted before, simply wrong. At least 8 IntLawGrrls've published in the area, on military and postconflict justice, the Geneva Conventions, counterterrorism, humanitarian law: Elena Baylis (Amelia Earhart), Mary Coombs (Charming Betsy), Elizabeth Lutes Hillman (Vera Brittain), Naomi Norberg (Anna Koransky) Diane Orentlicher (Beatrice), Naomi Roht-Arriaza (Gabriela Mistral), Beth Van Schaack (Eleanor Roosevelt), and I. So too have many of our colleagues; just a few of the names that jump to mind are Rosa Brooks, Laura A. Dickinson, Jenny Martinez, Mary Ellen O'Connell, Leila Nadya Sadat, Jane Stromseth, and Ruth Wedgwood.
The absence of any such voices in this Agora makes for an unfortunate reinforcement of an outdated misapprehension about who is expert on matters of international law and national security.

Pink ≠ fluffy

In cyberland last week, musings on the role of women in international law:

Our own Lakshmi Bai [IntLawGrrl Jaya Ramji-Nogales] saw "many shades of pink" in the fact that women (including her and 2 other IntLawGrrls) outnumbered men as presenters at an academic conference. Yet the note of optimism in her question, "Is the Future of International Law Rosy?", soured when commenters noted that "in Europe at least," women seemed relegated to human rights, a field deemed "fluffy," while men dominated trade and humanitarian law.

Meanwhile, a query at National Security Advisors blog, on why a U.S. academic panel on the Military Commissions Act included no woman among its 6 members, drew remarks in like vein. "[W]hat exactly is 'women's national security law'?" a commenter asked, adding that having Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State trumps any panel imbalance.

A few comments: 1st, to work in human rights means to interview the victims and to defend the perpetrators of the world's worst crimes, to assess the credibility of horrific testimony, to campaign for conventions or to write articles that labor to balance outrage at atrocity against instilled values respecting the rights of the accused. None of that is "fluffy," and to call it such demeans the women and men (there are many of both) who devote themselves to that work. If indeed this is an emerging stereotype, it ought to be fought at every turn.

2d, the list of women who work in national security law neither begins nor ends with Secretary Rice. She was preceded, of course, by Madeleine Albright, who remains active in international matters. Retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was among the members of the Iraq Study Group. Women, some of whom served in uniform, serve on boards of the National Institute of Military Justice. Several women help run the National Security Law Section of the very group that sponsored the questioned panel, and far more women teach and write on military justice and national security -- as is the case, at least in the United States, with fields like trade. (Included are many of us IntLawGrrls.)

Each of these many women no doubt approaches her work from her own vantage point. But most, I suspect, will describe what they do not as "women's" law, but rather, simply, as international law. Perhaps one day that description will draw no comment at all.

(Kudos to our colleague Steve Vladeck for raising the women-in-national-security question.)