Obama's targeted drone strikes--even on Americans--aren't illegal, writes Jack Goldsmith for Foreign Policy. In fact, he writes, there's a solid legal foundation and a number of checks and balances upholding his right to take out terrorists.

William Shawcross believes the United State should use the Nuremberg trials as a precedent when evaluating future legal proceedings against Al Qaeda and its associates.

This backgrounder emphasizes the need for the US and other countries to take offensive, and not defensive, measures against threats to global commerce and security.

President Obama wants to house some Guantanamo detainees in an Illinois prison. But bringing the detainess to the U.S. will likely broaden their legal rights. 'How much?' is the unanswered question.

Ashley S. Deeks examines international law regarding administrative detention in non-international armed conflicts.

A paper examining the International Criminal Court (ICC) and assessing how the next president of the United States could more constructively engage with the ICC in accordance with the Rome Statute.

The Suffolk Transnational Law Review examines the Medellin decision and its implications for the United States and the rule of law in international affairs.

This conference report addresses how to devise useful and pragmatic strategies on what steps the United States can do to help implement a judicial doctrine on war crimes called Responsibility to Protect, or R2P.

The United States needs the ICC to help restore its global credibility, discipline its own decision-making, and strengthen judicial intervention against atrocity crimes.

Number 21 in Amnesty International’s case sheets on the individual detainees at Guantanomo Bay, Cuba. This case concerns Sudanese national Adel Hamad who was taken at gunpoint from his home in Peshawar, Pakistan on 18 July 2002. Pakistani agents, led by a US agent, took him to a Pakistani prison where he was held for six and a half months before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay via Afghanistan.

Report from the Nieman Foundation of Harvard University that details the efforts by the Los Angeles Times to conduct a parallel investigation to the one being undertaken by the Army's Criminal Investigation Command (CID) into how a small U.S. Special Forces detachment in Afghanistan could be tied to two detainee deaths and two apparent cover-ups in less than two weeks. He says that the cases raise questions about the relatively low number of successful military prosecutions in criminal homicide and prisoner abuse cases and about whether the military is capable of policing itself in times of war.

Approximately 775 detainees have been held in Guantánamo since January 2002. As of late November 2006, some 345 had been released or transferred to around 26 different countries. The vast majority were never charged and are now at liberty. Some have been detained again. Others have faced harassment by the authorities. Amnesty International campaigned on behalf of some of the men who have been released from Guantánamo; in this report the organization highlights details of some of these cases.

In this summary of concerns Amnesty International argues that the operation of the detention centre at Guantánamo Bay symbolizes the US’s wider disregard of international law in its "war on terror". Amnesty argues that it is only the visible tip of the iceberg of indefinite and secret detentions, renditions and resort to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and says that secrecy surrounding detentions is dangerous for the prisoner, distressing for relatives, and detrimental to the rule of law.

Amnesty International’s summary of concerns that detainees at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba have suffered ill-treatment amounting to torture under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. Amnesty alleges that many of those held at Guantánamo have been ill-treated, whether in Afghanistan or elsewhere prior to their transfer to Guantánamo, or during their transfer, or as part of the interrogation process at the base, or as a result of the isolating, indefinite and punitive nature of detention in Guantánamo.

Amnesty International’s proposed procedure for the closure of the detention centre at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Amnesty International’s summary of the names and nationalities of all known detainees at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Amnesty International’s summary of the scale of detentions at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Amnesty International’s timeline summary of detentions at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In this report Amnesty International says that thousands of women have been raped in Sudan and Chad since the armed conflict began in Darfur in 2003. There have certainly been thousands. The names of 250 women who had been raped, and harrowing information about their cases, were recorded by Amnesty International on a 10-day visit to just three refugee camps in Chad in 2004. Recent months have seen a dramatic increase in the numbers of rapes as Darfur has been plunged into new fighting. In just one camp in Darfur, Kalma camp, the International Rescue Committee reported that rapes of women rose from under four to 200 a month during five weeks in July and August 2006. Overall, despite  the presence of an African Union peacekeeping force (African Union Mission in Sudan, AMIS) and international awareness of what is happening in Darfur, in 2006 rapes and other violence against women and girls have increased, not diminished.

This briefing summarizes Amnesty International’s assessment of and concerns about violations of international humanitarian law by Hizbullah in its attacks on northern Israel in July and August 2006.