Timeline for Can the US president legally kill at will?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
17 events
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| Jul 5 at 13:48 | history | edited | BurnsBA | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
typos; presumably "the target" is human, and not an "it"
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| Jul 5 at 8:10 | comment | added | Rekesoft | @gerrit Not really. The Obama administration produced a document saying that the Government considered itself authorized to kill american citizens without supervision if a series of circumstances concurred. This circumstances were, among others, the citizen being designated a danger to the security of the state, and having them captured by security forces deemed too complicated or risky. While at the moment this meant "terrorists on foreign soil" it can equally be "bothering rival POTUS candidate, who has too many supporters to risk a police detention in the open". | |
| Jul 5 at 7:11 | comment | added | gerrit | This Obama-era license to kill only applies outside of US soil, doesn't it? | |
| Jul 5 at 6:06 | comment | added | phoog | @ChellCPlus it is generally only possible to deprive a US citizen of that citizenship involuntarily if it was obtained by fraud. | |
| Jul 4 at 15:11 | comment | added | Frodyne | @ConnieMnemonic Anwar al-Awlaki was an American citizen who was killed with a drone strike. He was in Yemen at the time, and accused of being with al-Qaeda. You can read more here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki | |
| Jul 4 at 13:18 | comment | added | ConnieMnemonic | Can someone clarify something for me; when were Predator drones used against Americans?? | |
| Jul 4 at 13:12 | comment | added | ChellCPlus | Anwar Al-Aulaqi was a Jihadist and member of al-Qaeda. He was a member of one of the most notorious terrorist organizations on earth and played a role in orchestrating the groups actions in Yemen for which he was issued a death warrant by the Yemeni government. They didn't exactly kill an innocent person, but I am surprised they didn't revoke his citizenship. | |
| Jul 3 at 20:05 | comment | added | Obie 2.0 | @BenVoigt - It's not that the recent ruling is not a statement about judiciability, and it certainly does not prevent impeachment or compel reelection. It's that the case was not dismissed, and I don't think Al-Aulaqi v. Obama really precluded individual liability. What the ruling deemed as not judiciable was details of military and foreign policy, but indicated in my comment, people have still been held criminally liable despite acting in the service of military foreign policy. But the Trump case seems to close that possibility for the president, even after they have left office. | |
| Jul 3 at 18:53 | comment | added | Ben Voigt | @Obie2.0: I certainly do interpret the SCOTUS ruling as a statement about judiciability. It does not make POTUS immune to remedies which exist outside court, such as impeachment and the ballot box. | |
| Jul 3 at 16:32 | comment | added | Obie 2.0 | As for its practical relevance, that remains to be seen, but it would seem much easier to justify, for instance, blanket lifetime immunity for "accidentally" killing an activist during a presidentially ordered domestic FBI raid under this ruling than to argue that such an action was actually a foreign military action against a terrorist (the non-judiciability of legitimate foreign policy decisions has not previously prevented criminal liability in any case). | |
| Jul 3 at 16:27 | comment | added | Obie 2.0 | The relevance of the Trump case is that it (a) applies to all official acts, not just foreign military policy, (b) is an actual ruling on the merits of a case, not a dismissal for lack of standing or judiciability of a specific case, and (c) establishes a lack of individual liability, instead of merely barring preemptive oversight. These are substantive legal questions, so the answer is incomplete, insofar as the impression one could get from it is that the Trump case is of no legal relevance. | |
| Jul 3 at 16:21 | comment | added | Obie 2.0 | This is relevant because the main concern of the dismissal for being non-judiciable was that a decision requiring future oversight of details of foreign military operations fell outside the remit of the court. While not a particularly beneficial decision, it is doubtful that it created a precedent that removed liability for individuals for any actions engaged in under any such circumstances, and since it mentioned that this question was tied to the facts of a particular case, it's also doubtful that it applied unrestrictedly to domestic official actions by the executive. | |
| Jul 3 at 16:06 | comment | added | Obie 2.0 | This answer is somewhat incomplete. It doesn't mention Executive Order 11905 or Reid v. Covert, which arguably put these sort of extrajudicial assassinations on very shaky ground, legally. Nor does it mention that the case Al-Aulaqi v. Obama —the ACLU lawsuit mentioned in the question—was not resolved in favor of the Obama administration, but rather dismissed for lack of standing to file the case and on the basis that decisions of military foreign policy were non-judiciable. | |
| Jul 3 at 11:50 | history | edited | haxor789 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
edited body
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| Jul 3 at 9:31 | comment | added | haxor789 | The problem with those kinds of U.S. war crimes, crimes against humanity and otherwise morally dubious actions is that there often was a lack of intent to prosecute. Like Obama did it, but the Republican party didn't dissent, on the contrary they approved of the drone program and extended it under Trump while limiting it's transparency. Also, being pretty cynic, these problems were far away. Like this being labeled terrorist and killed without due process was for citizens abroad. While their own descend into tyranny should still bother the U.S. a lot more. | |
| Jul 3 at 7:19 | history | edited | Rekesoft | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 93 characters in body
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| Jul 3 at 7:12 | history | answered | Rekesoft | CC BY-SA 4.0 |