Would it be legal according to the laws of war if Ukrainian forces killed Putin in Moscow? We know pretty well where Putin will be on May 9: He will be the guest of honor at the Moscow victory day parade. As president, he is the commander in chief of the Russian armed forces. If the Ukrainian forces got heir hands on, say, a conventional cruise missile or some other means to kill Putin, would that be legal warfare or would that be a war crime or similar violation of the laws of war? As I understand it, the general legal opinion seems to be that acts of war are not restricted to current theaters of engagement (which would all be in Ukraine and Russian border regions as it pertains to the current war between Russia and Ukraine). That is how the U.S. justifies its drone killings. For the sake of the question we'll also assume that all due care has been taken to minimize civilian casualties by using a conventional warhead of the minimal strength sufficient to kill Putin given the precision of the weapon and reconnaissance.
Yes Providing the attack was otherwise made in accordance with the rules of war, enemy civilian leaders who are directly responsible for the prosecution of the conflict (so, the Minister of Defence, yes, the Minister of Housing, no) are combatants under International Humanitarian Law.
Some people seem to believe that just because something happens 'in the internet' it is somehow outside normal jurisdictions. Wrong. In may be harder to investigate and prosecute crimes in the internet, but the laws apply all the same. There are some problems when it is unclear 'where in the world' something did happen -- in the jurisdiction of the perpetrator, the victim, or the service provider? But problems of jurisdiction apply e.g. to international fraud cases in the non-web-world as well. In many jurisdictions, the informed and voluntary consent makes some things legal which would otherwise be illegal. For instance, if two boxers get into the ring, it is understood that each of them did consent to be hit by the other. But usually two fighters could not legally agree to a fight to the death, because even if there are laws on assisted suicide, they do not apply to a fight. Insults, libel, and slander are not on the same level as homicide. There are jurisdictions where they are not prosecuted without the request of the victim. But an insult might also violate other laws, e.g. disturbing the peace. So don't bet on such an app unless you know for sure which jurisdictions are involved.
Maybe, but we'll probably never know for sure. Officially, of course, he was not punished for his speech. He was punished for selling explosives without a license, which he admitted to. (He was also charged with illegally storing explosives and illegally mailing 'injurious material," but those charges were dropped in exchange for his guilty plea on the first count.) Whether those charges were a pretext to retaliate is probably unknowable. While it's a well-known fact that law enforcement frequently retaliates against people for exercising their right to free speech, this guy's story doesn't sound very credible. There is precedent for a prosecution for distributing Pest Control Report 2000, including the prosecution of white supremacist Leo Felton, a sad-sack loser who used the same material to build a bomb around to incite a "racial holy war" the same time. And just about a month after Ver's conviction, the man who owned the company that manufactured the product was convicted of violating federal explosives and transportation laws. Several months after that, he and his company entered into a consent decree with the Consumer Product Safety Commission ordering them to stop manufacturing Pest Control Report 2000.
Russian law in the 19th century was probably derivative of Roman law which is explained at page 594 of this 1903 law review article, because almost all countries in continental Europe at the time ultimately derived their substantive law from Roman law. There was a minor crime at Roman law for offensive statements, without regarding to the truth, and a tort at Roman law for false private statements, to which truth was a defense. Many countries at that time, probably Russia among them, also had special criminal offenses for insults to royalty and aristocrats. The right of publicity is a much later American invention than defamation law and developed in connection with the modern advertising agencies at common law in response to commercial ventures that sought to exploit professional models. It is unlikely that this tort would have existed in 19th century Russia.
In the united-kingdom, the legal basis flows from the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018. This allows regulations to be made for particular sanctions regimes, in this case The Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 and its several amendments, including three revisions this year. Under those regulations, the Secretary of State may designate individuals who are then subject to particular sanctions. A consolidated list is available for all individuals and organizations who have been named under any of the regulations, not just the Russia one. Working backwards from the list, we see such names as Vladimir Putin, who has an asset freeze on the grounds that - Vladimir Vladimirovich PUTIN is the President of the Russian Federation, carrying ultimate authority for the policy of the Russian government and Russian armed forces. In February 2022, PUTIN ordered Russian military forces to launch an invasion of Ukraine, undermining and threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty or independence of Ukraine. Thus, he has been named for the purposes of regulation 11, and the statement of reasons (required by regulation 8) refers to the specific grounds in regulation 6 by which a person can be added to the list. In this case, those grounds are 6(2)(a)(i) as interpreted by 6(3)(a), (2) In this regulation, an &quot;involved person&quot; means a person who — (a) is or has been involved in— (i) destabilising Ukraine or undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty or independence of Ukraine ... (3) For the purposes of this regulation, a person is “involved in destabilising Ukraine or undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty or independence of Ukraine” if— (a) the person is responsible for, engages in, provides support for, or promotes any policy or action which destabilises Ukraine or undermines or threatens the territorial integrity, sovereignty or independence of Ukraine For &quot;oligarchs&quot; who are on the list, the Foreign Secretary has specifically drawn attention to Gennady Timchenko, described as Russia's sixth-richest oligarch. The statement of reasons says: Gennadiy Timchenko, hereafter TIMCHENKO is a major shareholder in Bank &quot;Rossiya&quot;. Bank &quot;Rossiya&quot; is a key stakeholder in the National Media Group which supports Russian policy which is destabilising Ukraine. Following the annexation of Crimea, Bank &quot;Rossiya&quot; has expanded its bank branches and provision of insurance and investment throughout Crimea and Sevastopol; and offers support to military activities and the formation of major transport links and cards that allow the public to travel easily around the peninsula. Therefore, Bank &quot;Rossiya&quot; has supported the consolidation of Crimea into the Russian Federation by integrating the financial system following the annexation of Crimea. TIMCHENKO therefore is or has been involved in engaging in, providing support for, or promoting any policy or action which destabilises Ukraine or undermines or threatens the territorial integrity, sovereignty or independence of Ukraine. Additionally, TIMCHENKO is associated with a person involved in destabilising Ukraine or undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty or independence of Ukraine. These are the same regulation 6 grounds as for Putin, but with additional reasoning to draw the connection (also, a citation under 6(2)(d) for &quot;associated with&quot;). One reason for this text being required is to undercut any suggestion that the listing is because of &quot;guilt by association&quot;. In judicial review, for which continue reading below, this kind of statement and the process that gave rise to it is powerful evidence against a suggestion that the Secretary of State was acting other than rationally. We can now look back to the 2018 Act, which authorizes the 2019 Regulations and provides rules about how the Secretary of State can designate people. Detailed provisions in the Regulations trace back to rules in the Act about the shape of a sanctions regime; for example, the &quot;asset freeze&quot; of regulation 11 is within section 3 of the Act on &quot;Financial sanctions&quot;. There are also procedural safeguards around the making of regulations, mainly relating to Parliamentary approval, and around the designation of individuals. For example, a designated person can ask the Secretary of State to be removed from the list, and under section 22(3) she must do so if the person doesn't fit the criteria by which they were originally included. That would include if they are no longer an &quot;involved person&quot;, or if their designation were no longer deemed appropriate based on the purpose of the sanctions regulations. As with other executive actions, judicial review is available (under Chapter 4 of the Act), which could bring in considerations of whether the Secretary of State acted within her powers, did so &quot;reasonably&quot;, etc. Human rights grounds are also possible, in relation to procedural fairness (Article 6) or the right to enjoy property (ECHR Protocol 1, Article 1). Against those stand arguments on the public interest, UK compliance with international obligations, national security, the general integrity of the sanctions system, and so forth. It is plausible that if a claim reached this point, the Secretary of State would be able to show that the designation - as described in the statement of reasons above - was on sound policy grounds, was taken after a sober review of the evidence, and was proportionate in the circumstances. There is not much case law on the 2018 Act, given its recency. One example is R (Youssef) v Secretary of State [2021] EWHC 3188 (Admin) in which an Article 6 claim failed. That was in relation to UN sanctions against Al-Qaida, which is a different position from the one here, but it has some force for understanding the current UK system. The present Act was created partially in response to the judgement in HM Treasury v Ahmed [2010] UKSC 2 against a previous version of the sanctions laws, and the 2021 case found that the new version was acceptable. The judicial review avenue and the requirement to give reasons are directly aimed at complying with Article 6. While a court could always potentially find another problem, the current Act and the Regulations are as watertight as the drafters can make them in the light of existing precedent.
Different people have suggested different things as to what constitutes, &quot;the unitary executive theory&quot;. The US Supreme Court is not likely to simply adopt such a theory in general terms. It will, instead, rule on a specific case that comes before it, and state the principles behind that ruling. There are a number of Supreme Court rulings saying that a President must abide by laws limiting presidential authority, perhaps the most famous is Youngstown Sheet &amp; Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952) in which the Court rules that the President did not have authority to seize steel mills to put a stop to a labor dispute that was allegedly endangering national security during the Korean War. Congress had passed a law providing a different method of dealing with such situations, and President Truman did not follow the method established by that law. The President has broad power over the operations of executive branch agencies, possibly including the right to order an investigation halted for whatever reasons seem good to the president. If such a case came before the courts and they supported the President, presumably they would hold that the President's actions did not constitute obstruction of justice or any other crime. I find it highly unlikely that the Supreme Court would rule that the President may &quot;act against the rule of law&quot;, but they might rule that in particular cases the law implicitly grants the President power to take certain actions that others may not take.
Was International Law Violated? When it used chemical weapons to kill large numbers of civilians in his own country, Assad's regime in Syria was violating its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention, an international treaty obligation that the regime acknowledged was binding upon it in 2013 when at U.S. insistence and with Russian supervision, the Assad regime purported to destroy its chemical weapons stockpiles. It was also an action violating generally recognized standards of the customary international law of war that have been recognized since they were first clearly articulated in the Geneva Protocol of 1925 that took effect in 1928. This kind of action has also been recognized as a crime against humanity under customary international law, and this principle is why international criminal tribunals set up after crimes against humanity occur are not considered to be applying ex post facto laws. Also, since early on in the Syrian Civil War, during the Obama Administration, the U.S. ceased to recognize Assad's regime as the legitimate government of Syria. According to official U.S. policy, since 2012, the Syrian National Council, and not Assad's regime, has been the legitimate government of Syria. So, rather than being an attack on a sovereign regime, this was an act in defense of a different sometimes allied regime recognized as legitimate, with whom the U.S. is not at war. Moreover, given that fact that the U.S. now has a artillery combat ground troop unit deployed in Northern Syria as of earlier in 2017, in support of a Congressionally authorized military action in the same theater of conflict, the U.S. has a legitimate interest in protecting its own troops, as well as those of allies it supports in the part of the conflict that it is involved in under the 2001 AUMF, from chemical weapons attacks in Syria by preemptively disabling the Assad regime's ability to deploy those weapons, even though they were not directed at somewhat nearby U.S. forces in their most recent utilization this week. So, while there may not be entirely clear international legal authorization for this particular remedy for the Assad regime's clear violation of international law, there is not a clear prohibition on doing so either, and the general rule is that sovereign states have wide discretion to take military action in support of their perceived interests, particular when violations international obligations of the offender targeted for military action provide a justification for the use of military force under international law. This is because the main way of punishing a violation of international war while a conflict is still pending is called a reprisal which the Syrian strike fits to a tee. A reprisal is a limited and deliberate violation of international law to punish another sovereign state that has already broken them. . . . Reprisals refer to acts which are illegal if taken alone, but become legal when adopted by one state in retaliation for the commission of an earlier illegal act by another state. Article XII(3) of the Chemical Weapons Convention authorizes those remedies allowed under customary international law of which reprisal is one. Did The President Have Authority To Make The Strike Under U.S. Law? This said, the harder issue is whether this strike was legal under U.S. law, and not international law, which really has no meaningful binding enforcement mechanism other than politics, diplomacy and domestic law anyway. While the U.S. does not recognize the Assad regime as legitimate, it is not actually at war with that regime because the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) from 2001 that has been the main legal authorization for the "war on terror" against ISIS, pretty clear does not extend to Assad's regime in Syria. ISIS has been declared to be a successor to a branch of the organization the launched the 9-11 attack upon which the AUMF declared war. But, the formerly legitimate government of Syria (Assad's regime) is very difficult to treat as coming within that definition. However, while Congress has not authorized the use of military force by the U.S. against the Assad regime in Syria in this manner, Congress has approved appropriations to fund and support anti-Assad rebels, even though it may have been a bit of a fiasco, which at least provides some tacit evidence of Congressional consent to some sort of involvement in the Syrian civil war by the United States government against Assad's regime. In absence of an authorization of use of military force against the Assad regime, one alternative source of legal authority to make this strike is legislation (whose constitutionality has often been questioned, but has never actually challenged, was determined by the Justice Department to be constitutional in 1980, and which is arguably not justiciable) called the War Powers Act of 1973. This Act, on its face, purports to give the President the authority to make limited use of military force for short periods of time. Specifically (per the link): It provides that the U.S. President can send U.S. Armed Forces into action abroad only by declaration of war by Congress, "statutory authorization," or in case of "a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces." The War Powers Resolution requires the President to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days, with a further 30-day withdrawal period, without a Congressional authorization for use of military force (AUMF) or a declaration of war by the United States. The question of whether this incident is within the scope of the War Powers Act is disputed with U.S. Senator Rand Paul arguing the conditions triggering its use such as an attack on U.S. forces or the United States, have not been met. The issues presented by this incident under the War Powers Act are similar to those presented in the missile strike and follow up airstrikes made by the U.S. in Libya in 2011. There is also legitimate room for dispute regarding where the authority of the President as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces under Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution ends, and where the power of Congress to declare war and to enact other legislation pertaining to the U.S. military under Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution begins. Arguably, directing U.S. forces to make an isolated military strike from a location where they are already lawfully deployed in support of an AUMF authorized military mission in the region, in exigent circumstances, against a military force that is not recognized by the United States as the legitimate government of Syria, does not constitute a true act of war and is instead merely day to day management of the operations and discipline of the United States military that is within the Commander in Chief's authority, particularly when Congress has already tentatively recognized the Syria's Assad regime is an enemy of the United States in legislation short of an authorization for use of military force. Moreover, given that President Trump surely has majority support in both houses of Congress for this strike, the possibility that Congress may end up granting forgiveness rather than making much of the fact that he didn't ask for permission, may be mostly a formality in this case. Generally speaking, even if this issue is justiciable (i.e. amenable to resolution through the court system), court action to enforce separation of powers questions must be authorized, at least, by a resolution of a majority of one of the two houses of Congress. Generally speaking, taxpayer standing or just plain U.S. citizen standing, does not exist to enjoin or seek a remedy from a separation of powers violation.
While the point made by user6726 is not wrong with respect to this particular statute, it doesn't address a more basic point about how the supremacy clause works. Federal criminal laws govern punishments for federal crimes in the federal criminal justice system. Federal prosecutors bringing federal criminal charges against criminal defendants in the federal criminal justice system can and do secure death penalty sentences against criminal defendants in states where there is no state death penalty. One recent case where that happened was the Boston Marathon bombing case where a defendant was sentenced to death in federal court for the crime for violation of a federal criminal statute, despite the fact that Massachusetts has no death penalty of its own. This is not a supremacy clause issue. No state law had to be changed or invalidated because of the existence of the federal law. States law governs how the state criminal justice system works, not the federal criminal justice system. When we say that a state has abolished the death penalty, we mean that it has abolished it in the state criminal justice system. This doesn't absolutely foreclose the possibility that the death penalty will be imposed in that state on federal charges, although it does make it far less likely that the death penalty will be imposed. Partially, this is because "blue collar" crime is handled by the states. Partially, this is because out of comity and a concern that juries in states without a death penalty are less likely to vote for a capital sentence, federal prosecutors are less likely to seek the death penalty in a state without capital punishment than in a state with capital punishment. For example, there are 2,902 people on death row as of 2016, in the U.S. Almost 98% of death penalty convictions that have not yet been carried out were obtained in state courts. Only, 62 involve civilian death penalties imposed in federal courts (mostly in states that have the death penalty) and another 6 involve death penalties imposed in military courts (mostly in states that allow the death penalty or abroad). All of the other cases arose in state courts.