{"id":519132,"date":"2010-04-07T10:38:44","date_gmt":"2010-04-07T14:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opiniojuris.org\/?p=11855"},"modified":"2010-04-07T10:38:44","modified_gmt":"2010-04-07T14:38:44","slug":"the-constitutionality-of-president-obama%e2%80%99s-targeted-killing-of-u-s-citizens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/519132","title":{"rendered":"The Constitutionality of President Obama\u2019s Targeted Killing of U.S. Citizens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>by Julian Ku <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The NYT <a  href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/04\/07\/world\/middleeast\/07yemen.html?hp\">reports <\/a>that the Obama Administration has authorized the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric <a  title=\"Times article\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/11\/19\/us\/19awlaki.html\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span style=\"color: #004276;\">Anwar al-Awlaki<\/span><\/span><\/a>, The article notes the international law justification for his killing: he is an avowed member of Al Qaeda actively engaged in hostilities against the U.S.\u00a0 Under either the law of armed conflict or the general law of self-defense, the Administration probably\u00a0has the legal authority to kill him.\u00a0 (Unless international human rights law applies, but the administration plainly believes this law does not apply).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But, as I noted <a  href=\"http:\/\/opiniojuris.org\/2010\/02\/06\/are-obamas-assassinations-of-us-citizens-constitutional\/\">here <\/a>a few months ago, this international law analysis\u00a0does not answer questions about al-Awlaki&#8217;s constitutional rights.\u00a0 Under U.S. Supreme Court precedents, U.S. citizens often can invoke constitutional rights against the U.S. government, even when they are abroad. (See <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Reid_v._Covert\">Reid v. Covert<\/a>). Maybe this is a situation where granting\u00a0constitutional protections would be, as Justice Harlan\u00a0 suggested, &#8220;impracticable and anomalous.&#8221;\u00a0 It certainly seems that way, and I assume the Obama Administration has concluded that the Constitution does not apply.\u00a0 Alternatively, the Constitution might apply, and the theory is simply that al-Awlaki&#8217;s rights substantive and procedural Due Process rights are not being violated.\u00a0 This seems a harder argument to make, and it would be fascinating to see someone (like Harold Koh again?) make it.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/opiniojurisfeed\/~4\/QLbefSjEZ8I\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Julian Ku The NYT reports that the Obama Administration has authorized the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, The article notes the international law justification for his killing: he is an avowed member of Al Qaeda actively engaged in hostilities against the U.S.\u00a0 Under either the law of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-519132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}