On the front lines against drone strikes

ND professor: Targeted killings are illegal under international law.


SOUTH BEND -- Notre Dame law professor Mary Ellen O'Connell was in her office last month when Imran Khan, a former cricket star who could be Pakistan's next prime minister, phoned to ask for help.

Pakistanis are furious about the CIA's covert campaign of drone missile strikes, Khan told her. Was she aware that the CIA often doesn't know who it is killing?

"Yes, of all Americans, I think I have a pretty good handle on the facts," she replied, recounting the call.

O'Connell, a fierce critic of America's drone attacks outside a war zone, insists the targeted killings are illegal under international law.

"We wouldn't accept or want a world in which Russia or China or Iran is claiming authority to kill alleged enemies of the state based on secret evidence of the executive branch alone," O'Connell said. "And yet that's the authority we're asserting."

O'Connell, 54, has led a lonely campaign to stop the drones since she wrote a paper branding the first CIA drone strike, in 2002, as unlawful. She rejected claims by the George W. Bush administration that the attack, which killed several al-Qaida militants and a U.S. citizen, was a legitimate act of self-defense in the war on terrorism.

Since then, President Barack Obama has sharply increased drone attacks, and O'Connell has jousted with government officials, debated other academics, and outlined her critique in scholarly publications.

"Her views are definitely taken seriously," said Sean Murphy, a former State Department lawyer who argues the drone strikes are permitted under the law. "She's on the leading edge of this argument."

She remains in a small minority of U.S. legal scholars, but her views are gaining currency as targeted killings continue.

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