" President Obama’s Targeted Killing of U.S. Citizens"

This sounds like something insane. However, it's the latest news.

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. Under either the law of armed conflict or the general law of self-defense, the Administration probably has the legal authority to kill him. (Unless international human rights law applies, but the administration plainly believes this law does not apply).

But, as I noted here a few months ago, this international law analysis does not answer questions about al-Awlaki’s constitutional rights. 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 Reid v. Covert). Maybe this is a situation where granting constitutional protections would be, as Justice Harlan suggested, “impracticable and anomalous.” It certainly seems that way, and I assume the Obama Administration has concluded that the Constitution does not apply. Alternatively, the Constitution might apply, and the theory is simply that al-Awlaki’s rights substantive and procedural Due Process rights are not being violated. This seems a harder argument to make, and it would be fascinating to see someone (like Harold Koh again?) make it.

Weirdness. And it was discussed well before the event by Ron Paul:

The post 9/11 atmosphere that really worries me. It worries me about how much our CIA is involved overseas. And this week I could not believe a headline that said the president was considering the legality of assassinating an American citizen. No, it’s true. It’s true. He was born in this country, and he’s a Muslim and he’s identified to be with people who don’t like us. So they want to declare him an ‘enemy combatant’ which they can do like the attorney general of the president says, “Oh, he’s an enemy combatant, and therefore he has no rights. But he’s a terrorist.” Well, no. He is maybe a suspect, and nothing has been proven. He might be a bad guy, but is that the way you take care of bad guys? Talking in the White House about assassinating this guy?

I mean, what happens if conditions get really bad and we start talking to each other about some of the terrible things that Washington DC is doing to us. Are we going to be ‘enemy combatants’ because the precedent has been set already for American citizens to be imprisoned indefinitely?

Video in the original.