Guess who finished her fucking paper???

WOOT!

Seriously, Readers, writing a paper for an asshole professor whom you know will grade you down for being correct is suuuuuuuch a slog.  Oh my god.  Anyway, it is 22 pages and lots o' sources worth of finished, all about how Predator drone attacks are illegal under international law.

Here's the thing:

NO, WAIT.  Ok, this is like legally required here.  DO NOT rely on anything I say about law as gospel.  Ok?  I am just a law student.  I can be denied admission to the bar if someone relies on what I say because I passed myself off as having, like, official legal knowledge.  NO PLAYING WITH PREDATOR DRONES, KIDS.  You are perfectly allowed, however, to use anything I say and argue with whatever warmongering asshole you meet at a party and if you have a drink in your hand, feel free to throw it in hir face if ze says something along the lines of "Whatever, they're just Muslims" or even, "International law doesn't matter to the United States because we're special."  Then stomp on hir foot and run away.  I give you permission to do that.  Have at it.

Ok, so, folks have said they like the legal stuff, so I am going to explain how international law works, and why drones are illegal, in like 3 easy steps:

1. Customary international law (CIL) is the law that binds all nations.  CIL is determined by looking at state practice (and when I say state, I mean nation here) across the globe and something called opinio juris, which is fancy schmancy legal talk for: whatever everyone says.  What judges, legal scholars, treaties, UN conventions, etc. are saying.  Because states have to be doing whatever they are doing because they think they are required by law, not just because it is out of the goodness of their hearts.  Like, normally, torture?  Against CIL.  As is extrajudicial killing, apartheid, piracy, slavery.  The big bad stuff.  And states don't have to agree or sign a treaty to be bound by this stuff: if pretty much everyone the world over says it and agrees with it, it's international law, and it don't matter a damn bit if your state reserves the right to, I don't know, use biological weapons.  World says, "Tough shit."

But CIL changes over time, it adapts, the norms governing states alter.  Obviously, apartheid wasn't illegal 100 years ago, and no one contemplated biological weapons then either.  So, CIL norms shift.  Basically, you look to see what happens when a nation does something that's novel under the law.  If the other nations rush to copy it, or don't object, well hey: you've got a new international law norm.  If other states protest, CIL has not shifted, and what you're doing?  Still illegal.

2. Ok, so: Israel started using drone attacks in summer 2001.  The U.S. said: hey, those are extrajudicial killings.  Those are illegal.  Bad, Israel, no!  (Hey, if you want background on drones, try Jane Mayer's article in the New Yorker; it's like everything Jane Mayer writes, meaning extremely good).  But then 9/11 happened and the U.S. was like, YAY DRONES!

So I kept telling my douchecanoe professor that drone attacks were illegal under CIL.  And he kept telling me they weren't and I should be reading some cat named Ken Anderson who would put me straight.  So I read Ken Anderson.  And Ken Anderson called drone attacks "per se illegal."  He said:

To put it simply, the international law community does not accept targeted killings even against al Qaeda, even in a struggle directly devolving from September 11 . . . The result is that a strategic centerpiece of U.S. counterterrorism policy rests upon legal grounds regarded as deeply illegal – extrajudicial killing is one of the most serious violations of human rights, after all, as well it should be – by large and influential parts of the international community.

3. My paper is done, my point proven, Elvis has left the building.  And THEN I had to write 19 other pages of bullshit to finish this fucking thing. 

AND I had to write all those pages for a man who suffers from severe reading comprehension problems apparently, no less.

But lookit that, Readers!  You mighta just learned something today!

Anyway, if anyone is like reeeeaaaaally interested, I guess you can email me and I can email you my paper.  Basically the U.S. is now claiming we can use drones now under the legal justification of self-defense.  Except of course the way we characterize self-defense as this big fuckoff power that allows us to do whatever and kill whomever we want?  STILL NOT ACCEPTABLE under CIL.  We are just swinging and missing over here, folks.

That's it.  I still have a post to write about the legal status of the Gitmo detainees, and I want to write a post about being a "whore," but my brain has gone soft and mushy and I am going to do something to entertain it before it has just had it with me and tries to escape out my ear and make a break for the door.

But remember, like I said: I know I have been doing international law all year and written many a paper on it and have had internships and jobs working on it but I am still not a lawyer.  No relying.  I am right, though, so whatever with my fucking professor.