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Narrative Kill or Capture: Unreliable Narration in International Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2015

MATTHEW WINDSOR
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Abstract

This article evaluates the benefits of a ‘turn to narration’ in international legal scholarship. It argues that significant attention should be paid to the narrators who employ international law as a vocabulary to further their professional projects. Theories of unreliable narration help map consensus within international law's interpretive community in a manner that is acutely sensitive to point of view and perspective. The article examines the existence and extent of unreliable narration through a case study: the practice of targeted killing by the Obama administration in the United States. The struggle for control of the narrative, by narrators with different professional roles and cognitive frames, is ultimately a struggle for interpretive power, with the resulting ability to ‘kill or capture’ divergent narrative visions. Unreliable narration offers a critical heuristic for assessing how narratives are generated, sustained, and called into question in international law, while fostering reflexive inquiry about international law as a professional discipline.

Keywords

interpretive communitynarrativetargeted killingtransparencyunreliable narrator
Type
INTERNATIONAL LEGAL THEORY
Information
Leiden Journal of International Law , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , December 2015 , pp. 743 - 769
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law 2015 

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145 Ibid., at 87.

146 Ibid., at 93.

147 Al-Awlaqi v. Obama, 727 F. Supp.2d 1, 46–52 (DDC 2010). See generally Dehn, J. and Heller, K., ‘Targeted Killing: The Case of Anwar al-Awlaki’, (2011) 159 U.Pa.L.Rev. 175Google Scholar; Chesney, R., ‘Who May Be Killed? Anwar al-Awlaki as a Case Study in the International Legal Regulation of Lethal Force’, (2010) 13 YIHL 3Google Scholar.

148 Ibid., (Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief).

149 Ibid.

150 Ibid.

151 Ibid.

152 See Gray, C., ‘Targeted Killing: Recent US Attempts to Create a Legal Framework’, (2013) 66 CLP 75Google Scholar. For a discussion of speechmaking, see Ingber, R., ‘Interpretation Catalysts and Executive Branch Legal Decisionmaking’, (2013) 38 Yale J.Int'l L. 359Google Scholar.

153 H. H. Koh, ‘The Obama Administration and International Law’, Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law, 25 March 2010. Available at: http://www.state.gov/s/l/releases/remarks/139119.htm/ (accessed 7 August 2015). See McKelvey, T., ‘Defending the Drones: Harold Koh and the Evolution of US Policy’, in Bergen, P. and Rothenberg, D. (eds.), Drone Wars: Transforming Conflict, Law and Policy (2015)Google Scholar, at 85.

154 E. Holder, Speech at Northwestern University School of Law, 5 March 2012. Available at: www.justice.gov/lso/opa/ag/speeches/2012/ag.speech-1203051.html/ (accessed 7 August 2015).

155 Brennan, supra note 133.

156 Koh, supra note 153.

157 Living Under Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in Pakistan (September 2012). Available at: http://livingunderdrones.org/ (accessed 7 August 2015).

158 Ibid., at v.

159 Ibid., at ix.

160 New York Times and ACLU v. US Department of Justice 11 Civ 9336 (2 January 2013).

161 See Kaye, D., ‘International Law Issues in the Department of Justice White Paper on Targeted Killing’, (2013) 17 (8)ASIL Insights 1Google Scholar; D. Cole, ‘How We Made Killing Easy’, New York Review of Books (6 February 2013).

162 Obama, ‘Remarks by the President at the National Defense University’, 23 May 2013. Available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/23/remarks-president-national-defense-university (accessed 7 August 2015).

163 Ibid.

164 UN General Assembly, Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary executions, A/68/382, 13 September 2013.

165 Ibid., at 108.

166 UN General Assembly, Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism, 18 September 2013, at 41.

167 UN Human Rights Committee, Concluding Observations on the Fourth Report of the United States of America, adopted by the Committee in its 110th session, 10–28 March 2014.

168 Ibid., at 9.

169 J. Jaffer, ‘Obama's Drone Memo is Finally Public’, The Guardian (24 June 2014).

170 J. Jaffer, ‘The Drone Memo Cometh’, Just Security (21 June 2014).

171 ‘A Thin Rationale for Drone Killings’, New York Times (23 June 2014).

172 Johnstone, supra note 116, at 93.

173 K. Anderson in J. Goldsmith, Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency after 9/11 (2012), at 200.

174 Kingsbury, Krisch, and Stewart, supra note 63.

175 For a discussion of ‘lawfare’, see Goldsmith, supra note 173, at 223–33.

176 See H. Bruff, Bad Advice: Bush's Lawyers in the War on Terror (2009), at 61–83.

177 Shroff, M., ‘The Worldly Task’, in Geiringer, C. and Knight, D. (eds.), Seeing the World Whole: Essays in Honour of Sir Kenneth Keith (2008), at 267Google Scholar.

178 M. Weller, Iraq and the Use of Force in International Law (2010), at 253.

179 Goldsmith, J., ‘The Irrelevance of Prerogative Power, and the Evils of Secret Legal Interpretation’, in Fatovic, C. and Kleinerman, B. (eds.), Extra-Legal Power and Legitimacy: Perspectives on Prerogative (2013), 214CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 230–31.

180 For analysis of the deficiencies of the speeches, see Gray, supra note 152, at 105.

181 Supra note 161. See Pozen, D., ‘The Leaky Leviathan: Why the Government Condemns and Condones Unlawful Disclosures of Information’, (2013) 127 Harv.L.Rev. 512Google Scholar.

182 G. Greenwald, ‘The NYT and Obama Officials Collaborate to Prosecute Awlaki After He's Executed’, The Guardian (11 March 2013). See generally R. Sagar, Secrets and Leaks (2013).

183 Jaffer, supra note 169.

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185 T. Cheng, When International Law Works: Realistic Idealism after 9/11 and the Global Recession (2012), at 49–53.

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188 Johns, supra note 72, at 7–8.

189 Gray, supra note 152, at 87.

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192 Peters, A., ‘Towards Transparency as a Global Norm’ in Bianchi, A. and Peters, A. (eds.), Transparency in International Law (2013), 534CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 568–9.

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195 S. Shane and J. O. Becker, ‘Secret Kill List Proves a Test of Obama's Principles and Will’, New York Times (29 May 2012). See also Sanders, R., ‘(Im)plausible Legality: The Institutionalization of Human Rights Abuses in the American “Global War on Terror”’, (2011) 15 (4)IJHR 605Google Scholar.

196 G. Chamayou, Drone Theory (2015), at 163.

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198 A. Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1993), Ch. 23.

199 Brooks, supra note 9, at 28.

200 Riggan, supra note 79, at 10.

201 Kennedy, D., ‘Lawfare and Warfare’, in Crawford, J. and Koskenniemi, M. (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to International Law (2012)Google Scholar, at 158.

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204 See Dawes, J. and Gupta, S., ‘On Narrative and Human Rights’, (2014) 5 (1)Humanity 149CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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208 Compare Koh, supra note 153, with Koh, ‘How to End the Forever War?’ (Oxford Union, 7 May 2013). In March 2015, a group of students at New York University wrote an open letter of no-confidence in Koh's academic appointment at that institution, on the basis of his ‘direct facilitation of the US government's extrajudicial imposition of death sentences’. A counter-petition circulated, lauding Koh's ‘unquestionable personal commitment to human rights’. For discussion, see ‘Drone Strikes and International Law: Fallout Reaches The Ivory Tower’, The Economist (22 April 2015); E. Massimino, ‘The Wrong Litmus Test for Activists’, The Washington Post (30 April 2015); P. Alston, ‘Harold Koh and the Battle of the Dueling Petitions’, Just Security (20 April 2015); R. Goodman, ‘Advancing Human Rights From Within: The Footsteps of Harold Koh’, Just Security (10 April 2015). See generally Edelson, C., ‘The Law in Service to Power: Academics and Executive Branch Lawyers’, (2013) 43 (3)Presidential Studies Quarterly 618CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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211 D. Kennedy, supra note 142, at 116.

212 M. Mazzetti, C. Savage, and S. Shane, ‘How a US Citizen Came to Be in America's Cross Hairs’, New York Times (9 March 2013).

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218 Sennett in P. Brooks (ed.), The Humanities and Public Life (2014), at 102.

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221 See F. Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1982).

222 J. Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (2010), at 9.

223 Ibid., at 12.

224 White, J. B., ‘Law as Language: Reading Law and Reading Literature’, (1982) 60 Tex.L.Rev. 415Google Scholar, at 444.