12. Legal and Moral Dilemmas of Targeted Killing by Drones

Harold Hongju Koh is the Legal Adviser of the Department of State, the 22nd to serve in that position. He is one of the country’s leading experts on public and private international law, national security law, and human rights. He is on leave from Yale Law School, where he is the Martin R. Flug '55 Professor of International Law at Yale Law School. From 2004 to 2009, Koh served as the 15th Dean of Yale Law School. From 1993 to 2009, he was also the Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law at Yale Law School. From 1998 to 2001, Koh served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. He previously served on the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on Public International Law. A Marshall Scholar, Koh graduated from Harvard, Oxford, and Harvard Law School, and has received eleven honorary degrees and more than 30 awards for his human rights work, including awards from Columbia Law School and the American Bar Association for his lifetime achievements in International law.

The critics say this damage is unacceptable as too many civilians got killed or wounded.

Polling in this area of low knowledge is of limited value, however. It is instructive of public opinion any more than asking people on the street about the Higgs Boson particle. People are only aware of vague details and have absorbed willfully incorrect memes and images from the media. Explaining the military drone program and the issues surrounding it requires a minimum of a 20 min conversation.

The New York University School of Law professors have established in Autumn 2013 a successful Web site on security related legal thinking /justsecurity.org/.

On the other hand, there is in the USA the “Guantánamo bar”—the 500 or so lawyers, many of them from top-drawer firms, leading law schools, and civil liberties organizations—who are representing terrorist defendants. Many of them have often gone far beyond providing competent counsel in court.