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Executive branch officials rest the President's authority in today's war against ISIS, al Qaeda, and other terrorist groups on an expansive interpretation of a 15-year-old statute, the 2001 "Authorization for Use of Military Force" (AUMF), passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. They rely on that statute to justify force against groups neither referenced in – nor even in existence at the time of – the 2001 statute, by invoking a creative theory of international law they call "co-belligerency." Under this theory, the President can read his AUMF authority flexibly, to justify force against not only those groups covered by the statute, but also new groups that "join the fight." In relying on "co-belligerency," executive branch officials maintain that the President's authority is bound by a clearly constraining rule with an established legal pedigree, but the co-belligerency theory does not in fact deliver on either. Instead, the Executive's position is fluid, evolving, internally contested, and – contrary to the assurance that it has a firm foundation in international law – rests on shaky doctrinal grounds. In fact, the record suggests that executive branch officials are not even unified themselves on what the concept means or where it comes from. And yet the existence of this contested idea nevertheless acts as some impediment if not a barrier to executive action. It is, in effect, a grey-ish legal space, dangerously close to what David Dyzenhaus has called a "legal grey hole," a mere "façade" of legal constraint. This article presents a story of a creative idea that became entrenched law, but in the process lost much of its shape. The result has been neither a clear limit on Presidential power, nor an executive branch run completely amok, but rather an amorphously-defined pool of discretionary authority for the President that few if any fully understand.

At Havana on March 27, 1941, Attorney General Jackson delivered an address designed to prove that as a matter of law the United States was now obliged to render to England (and presumably others) all aid " short of war," while " at the same time it is the declared determination of the government to avoid entry into the war as a belligerent." Apparently convinced that United States military aid to one belligerent alone cannot be justified by the traditional international law, the Attorney General feels obliged first to explode as obsolete the international law conceptions of war and neutrality of the past two centuries, culminating in The Hague Conventions, and to maintain that a new international law has now been revealed in the Covenant of the League of Nations, the Kellogg Pact, the Budapest " Articles of Interpretation" of 1934, and the Argentine Anti-War Treaty of 1933, all of which are alleged to make discrimination the new way of life for neutrals. The legislation of Congress requiring impartiality is not accorded even honorable mention. The " new international law" is thus found in the vague and illusory monuments to the myth called " collective security," which crumbled under the impact of the first European crisis. It should be no surprise to the Attorney General that many international lawyers do not share his views on international law or how international law is created, or follow his unique construction of documents.

War is a cause of gains and losses. Economic historians have long stressed the extreme importance of considering the economic potential of society for belligerency, the role of management of chaos to bear the costs of battle and casualties, and ingenious and improvisation methodologies for emergency management. However, global and inter-temporal studies on warring are missing. The adoption of computational tools for data processing is a key modeling option with present day resources. In this paper, hierarchical clustering techniques and multidimensional scaling are used as efficient instruments for visualizing and describing military conflicts by electing different metrics to assess their characterizing features: time, time span, number of belligerents, and number of casualties. Moreover, entropy is adopted for measuring war complexity over time. Although wars have been an important topic of analysis in all ages, they have been ignored as a subject of nonlinear dynamics and complex system analysis. This paper seeks to fill these gaps in the literature by proposing a quantitative perspective based on algorithmic strategies. We verify the growing number of events and an explosion in their characteristics. The results have similarities to those exhibited by systems with increasing volatility, or evolving toward chaotic-like behavior. We can question also whether such dynamics follow the second law of thermodynamics since the adopted techniques reflect a system expanding the entropy. ; publishersversion ; published

From the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, v. 7 (1896), no. 3, p. 450-[461]. ; Title from cover. ; Mode of access: Internet.

Few problems raised by the Spanish civil war are more interesting than those growing out of the fact that a state of war, in the legal sense, does not exist; belligerent rights have been accorded to neither of the contestants by third Powers. Consequently, on January 8 of this year, Germany turned over to the rebel authorities two Spanish loyalist vessels captured in retaliation to an "act of piracy"—an indictment earned by the loyalist government for its seizure of the German freighter, Palos. One may feel justifiably surprised that a government almost universally recognized as legitimate can be charged with piratical activities. Further reflection reveals that the Spanish situation presents many more questions concerning the rights and duties of the contestants as against third parties. In the absence of the recognition of belligerency, what are the rights of loyalist and rebel ships on the high seas? In the territorial waters of Spain? May the fascist or socialistic factions establish blockades? What are the powers and validity of their prize courts? Who is answerable for the illegal acts of the rebels should they lose—or be victorious? What claims will the Spanish Government have as against third Powers should one or the other prove successful? May the loyalist authorities by simple decree close to neutral trade the ports held by the insurgents? Moreover, how would all of these matters be affected if the maritime Powers of the world were to recognize the existence of a state of war, i.e., belligerency, in Spain? And, finally, in view of the magnitude and duration of the struggle, is there any justification for withholding such recognition?

The Panama Canal was originally conceived as a highway for peaceful commerce between nations. The extensive use of the Canal by the vessels of many countries indicates that it has fulfilled such a function. At the same time the Canal has played a part in non-peaceful intercourse. It has facilitated the transportation of materials of war and of troops. It has enabled "vessels of war to move rapidly from ocean to ocean, thus affecting naval strategy. From the commencement of its undertaking the United States Government has regarded the Panama Canal as an instrument of national defense. These facts serve to underline the importance of the Canal to all maritime states in war as well as in peace.