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The Killing of Osama Bin Laden and Anwar Al-Aulaqi: Uncharted Legal Territory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 August 2012

Beth Van Schaack
Beth Van Schaack
Affiliation:
Santa Clara University School of Law, Santa Clara, CA 95053, USA e-mail: [email protected]
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Extract

The killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May 2011 and Anwar al-Aulaqi in Yemen in September 2011 both raise the question of when the killing of an identified individual posing a threat to a nation-state is lawful. Although it has not yet been forced to publicly defend either killing in any great detail, the Obama Administration has insisted on the legality of both operations by deploying an amalgam of legal and rhetorical arguments that explicitly or implicitly invoke multiple bodies of law. As an administration spokesperson stated in connection with the Bin Laden operation:

Type
Current Developments
Information
Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law , Volume 14 , December 2011 , pp. 255 - 325
Copyright
Copyright © T.M.C. Asser Instituut and the Authors 2011

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