Sean Watts

United States Military Academy West Point | USMA West Point · Department of Law

The structural role of law-of-war perfidy is widely unappreciated and misunderstood. More than a prohibition of underhanded or dishonorable conduct, the prohibition of perfidy is an essential buttress to the law of war as a medium of exchange between combatants – a guarantee of minimum respect and trust between belligerents even in the turmoil of w...

The class of combatant constitutes one of the most important instrumentalities of the law of war. Combatant status resolves critical and enduring legal questions such as immunity from prosecution for warlike acts, susceptibility to intentional targeting, and, in part, treatment upon capture. Since the late nineteenth century, codifications of the i...

Legal voids exist and operate nowhere more clearly and widely in international law than in the laws of war applicable to non-international armed conflicts (NIAC). Status of government actors in NIAC provides an intriguing and specific example of just such a void. Where the protections and obligations of the law of armed conflict are premised almost...

The Israeli interception of a flotilla of civilian ships bound for Gaza in May of 2010 fueled ongoing questions about the content, efficacy, and adequacy of the law of armed conflict (LOAC). Debate focused quickly on fundamental substantive legal issues such as proportionality, humanitarian assistance, treatment during detention, and even the overa...

Newly created State cyber security agencies, the reality of cyber attacks, and evolutions in cyber attack strategy will have important effects on the UN Charter's security regime, specifically the law governing States' resort to self-defense. In particular, low-intensity computer network attacks (CNA) confound efforts at correlation, frustrate attr...

In the aftermath of the Cold War, many questioned the continuing efficacy of collective security structures such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United Nations Security Council. Yet North East Asia never enjoyed a formal, institutionalized collective security structure. As Russia and the United States compete with China for influe...

The national security implications of computer network attacks (CNA) have become far-reaching and have prompted major adjustments to our nation's governmental structure and defense strategy. One of the current President's early executive acts created a national Cyberczar to coordinate U.S. defenses against CNA. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense...

This study of the extraordinary challenges faced by military attorneys and commanders in the fight against terrorism is a portrait of how law, war, and politics have converged to raise the stakes and increase the complexity of legal operations in the U.S. armed forces. Although many articles have probed the nuances of international law, the law of...

This Article examines how the principle of reciprocity operates within the international law of war. Tracing the historical development and application of the law, the Article demonstrates that the existing law of war derives from a set of rules that are contingent on reciprocity. Contrary to common nderstanding, reciprocity strongly influences sta...

This article addresses the limited and distinct function of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal's established by the Department of Defense to review enemy combatant designations. It explains how the predicate legal determinations made by the United States with regard to the conflict in Afghanistan and the conflict with al Qaeda prevent these tribu...

Speakers:Kristen Boon (Seton Hall)Sean Watts (Creighton)Ralph Wilde (University College London) Moderator:Cesare Romano (LLS) Video of Panel Two