Targeted Warfare: Individuating Enemy Responsibility

80 Pages Posted: 15 Aug 2012 Last revised: 13 Nov 2013

See all articles by Samuel Issacharoff

Samuel Issacharoff

New York University School of Law

Richard H. Pildes

New York University School of Law

Date Written: November 2013

Abstract

Legitimacy of the use of military force is undergoing a fundamental but insufficiently appreciated moral and legal transformation. Whereas the traditional practices and laws of war defined “the enemy” in terms of categorical, group-based judgments that turned on status – a person was an enemy not because of any specific actions he himself engaged in, but because he was a member of an opposing army – we are now moving to a world that, implicitly or explicitly, requires the individuation of personal responsibility of specific “enemy” persons before the use of military force is justified. Increasingly, the legitimate use of military force is tied to adjudicative-like judgments about the individual acts and roles of specific “enemy” figures; that is the case whether the force involved is military detention or lethal killing. This transformation transcends the conventional debates about whether terrorism should be treated more like war or crime and is more profound in its implications.

This readjustment in the basic premises underlying the justified use of military force will have, and is already having, implications for all the institutions involved in the use of military force and in the processes by which decisions are made to use force. For the military, this change will generate pressures to create internal, adjudicative-like processes to ensure accurate, credible judgments about the individual responsibility of particular “enemy” fighters. For the executive, these changes will propel greater engagement in decisions that had previously been more exclusively within the province of the military itself. For the courts, this transformation toward individuated judgments of responsibility will inevitably bring about a greater judicial role in assessing wartime judgments than in the past, as has begin to occur already. These changes are not yet directly reflected (or at least fully reflected) in the formal laws of war, but we anticipate that as these changes embed themselves in the practices of states, especially dominant states, these changes in practice will also eventually come to be embodied in the legal frameworks that regulate the use of force. This Article, after identifying this fundamental transformation as the central factor driving struggles over the proper boundaries of military force, then explores the ramifications of this change for issues like military detention and targeted killings.

Keywords: National Security Law, Constitutional Law, Military Law, Terrorism, Public International Law, Laws of War, Detention, Targeted Killing

Suggested Citation

Issacharoff, Samuel and Pildes, Richard H., Targeted Warfare: Individuating Enemy Responsibility (November 2013). New York University Law Review, Vol. 88, 2013, NYU School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 12-40, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2129860 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2129860

Samuel Issacharoff

New York University School of Law ( email )

40 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012-1099
United States
212-998-6580 (Phone)
212-995-3150 (Fax)

Richard H. Pildes (Contact Author)

New York University School of Law ( email )

40 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012-1099
United States
(212) 998-6377 (Phone)
(212) 995-4341 (Fax)

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
637
Abstract Views
4,336
Rank
76,870
PlumX Metrics