Institutional Choice and Targeted Killing: A Comparative Perspective

For over a decade, the use of targeted killing has been one of the most controversial issues in counterterrorism policy and law. One longstanding debate over this tactic concerns the allocation of decision-making and oversight authority among the branches of government. As attempts to settle this debate through textual and historical sources yield indeterminant answers, scholars tend to examine them through a functionalist prism, asking what institutional structures best serve the interests of national security while ensuring adequate accountability and preventing unnecessary force. This article, retaining that functionalist framing of that issue, will approach the question through a comparative law analysis. Three of the countries most heavily engaged in global counterterrorism—the U.S., the U.K., and Israel—have adopted substantially different approaches for regulating counterterrorism targeting, each according a primary supervisory role to a different governmental actor: the Executive in the U.S., Parliament in the U.K., and the Judiciary in Israel. This article describes, compares, and critically analyzes these approaches. Drawing on comparative institutional analysis theory, it then examines the findings and reaches three main conclusions. First, that in light of the judiciary’s unique structural perspective and expertise, some judicial involvement in developing the legal standard that guides and constrains government action is desirable. Second, that suboptimal decision-making and illegality due to executive bias are more likely to occur where the executive is accountable only to its own internal oversight mechanisms. And third, that in both presidential and parliamentarian systems, legislators do not have and are unlikely to have any sort of meaningful influence on executive behavior in this domain. The article concludes by suggesting a few possible institutional reforms

Totemic Functionalism in Foreign Affairs Law

In many Western democracies, and particularly in the United States, foreign affairs are primarily an executive enterprise. The travel ban, the exit from the Irannuclear deal, and the airstrikes against the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria are just a few recent illustrations of unilateral assertions of presidential power. A large part of the justification for treating foreign affairs differently than other areas of public policy, in which political and judicial checks on the executive are more robust, is functional. Owing to the executive’s relative institutional advantages over the legislature and the judiciary—in expertise, knowledge, speed, unitary structure, and democratic accountability—courts afford the President considerable deference in cases relating to foreign affairs. But there is something deeply flawed in the way judges apply functionalist reasoning in this context. Instead of using functionalism for what it is—a contextual and adaptable paradigm for ascertaining whether and how much deference is desired in order to make the challenged policy or act work best—judges frequently simply rely on the executive’s special competence to apply a de facto presumption of near-total deference. I term this practice “totemic functionalism.” This Article traces the conceptual underpinnings of totemic functionalism and critically analyzes its pervasive effect in foreign affairs law. Using three case studies and other recent examples, it then shows how totemic functionalism undermines the system of checks and balances, first between the organs of government and then, indirectly, inside the executive branch. As a result, while judicial deference in foreign affairs is often excused with the assertion that other non-judicial checks provide adequate substitute, I show that the near-total deference arising from totemic functionalism insulates the President from any sort of accountability

Smart Swarms of Bacteria-Inspired Agents with Performance Adaptable Interactions

Collective navigation and swarming have been studied in animal groups, such as fish schools, bird flocks, bacteria, and slime molds. Computer modeling has shown that collective behavior of simple agents can result from simple interactions between the agents, which include short range repulsion, intermediate range alignment, and long range attraction. Here we study collective navigation of bacteria-inspired smart agents in complex terrains, with adaptive interactions that depend on performance. More specifically, each agent adjusts its interactions with the other agents according to its local environment – by decreasing the peers' influence while navigating in a beneficial direction, and increasing it otherwise. We show that inclusion of such performance dependent adaptable interactions significantly improves the collective swarming performance, leading to highly efficient navigation, especially in complex terrains. Notably, to afford such adaptable interactions, each modeled agent requires only simple computational capabilities with short-term memory, which can easily be implemented in simple swarming robots

Cross-ancestry GWAS meta-analysis identifies six breast cancer loci in African and European ancestry women.

Our study describes breast cancer risk loci using a cross-ancestry GWAS approach. We first identify variants that are associated with breast cancer at P < 0.05 from African ancestry GWAS meta-analysis (9241 cases and 10193 controls), then meta-analyze with European ancestry GWAS data (122977 cases and 105974 controls) from the Breast Cancer Association Consortium. The approach identifies four loci for overall breast cancer risk [1p13.3, 5q31.1, 15q24 (two independent signals), and 15q26.3] and two loci for estrogen receptor-negative disease (1q41 and 7q11.23) at genome-wide significance. Four of the index single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) lie within introns of genes (KCNK2, C5orf56, SCAMP2, and SIN3A) and the other index SNPs are located close to GSTM4, AMPD2, CASTOR2, and RP11-168G16.2. Here we present risk loci with consistent direction of associations in African and European descendants. The study suggests that replication across multiple ancestry populations can help improve the understanding of breast cancer genetics and identify causal variants

Rethinking Foreign Affairs Deference

How should courts handle cases that implicate foreign relations or national security? What weight should courts give to the executive branch’s view of the law in these matters? To date, one can identify in the jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court no less than four theoretical approaches—varying by the degree of judicial deference due to the executive—that suggest competing visions about the constitutional role of courts in these areas. Each approach has been criticized fiercely for either abdicating the constitutional duty of the courts or obstructing the nation’s pursuit of its security and foreign policy objectives. Absent a clear principle guiding when to apply each approach, courts invoke these approaches intermittently, generating considerable confusion. Current doctrine is missing a framework for mediating tensions between the four approaches. This Article seeks to fill that gap. It draws from the Margin of Appreciation (MoA), a doctrine international courts, especially in Europe, use widely to calibrate the level of deference owed to the principal decision-maker in separation of powers and human rights issues. Compared to parallel doctrines courts traditionally apply, the MoA offers a sophisticated framework for addressing deference claims by the executive. The doctrine provides courts criteria for optimizing the mode of their review, disciplines judicial decision-making, and reduces costs of judicial errors in matters of national importance. This Article reconstructs the MoA as a domestic law doctrine. It makes the necessary adaptations for “domesticating” the MoA and develops criteria for considering deference claims in a variety of foreign affairs and national security matters. In doing so, this Article demonstrates how a domestic MoA approach can generate more nuanced judicial engagement with foreign affairs, encourage deliberative decision-making by policymakers, and promote interbranch dialogue about the role of legal institutions in the high-stakes areas of foreign affairs and national security

Elucidation of the Charging Mechanisms and the Coupled Structural–Mechanical Behavior of Ti₃C₂T_x (MXenes) Electrodes by In Situ Techniques

The discovery of the Ti3C2Tx compounds (MXenes) a decade ago opened new research directions and valuable opportunities for high-rate energy storage applications. The unique ability of the MXenes to host various mono- and multivalent cations and their high stability in different electrolyte environments including aqueous, organic, and ionic liquid solutions, promoted the rapid development of advanced MXene-based electrodes for a large variety of applications. Unlike the vast majority of typical intercalation compounds, the electrochemical performance of MXene electrodes is strongly influenced by the presence of co-inserted solvent molecules, which cannot be detected by conventional current/potential electrochemical measurements. Furthermore, the electrochemical insertion of ions into MXene interspaces results in strong coupling with the intercalation-induced structural, dimensional, and viscoelastic changes in the polarized MXene electrodes. To shed light on the charging mechanisms of MXene systems and their associated phenomena, the use of a large variety of real-time monitoring techniques has been proposed in recent years. This review summarizes the most essential findings related to the charging mechanism of Ti3C2Tx electrodes and their potential induced structural and mechanical phenomena obtained by in situ investigations.RST/Storage of Electrochemical Energ