Episode 29: Military Commissions, Military Officers in the Cabinet, the Laws of War, and More

The National Security Law Podcast

Bobby Chesney and Steve Vladeck

Courses, Politics, News, Education, Government

4.8 • 646 Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2017

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week's episode certainly has a military theme. Professors Chesney and Vladeck start off with a surprisingly (or is it disturbingly?) lengthy discussion of the writ of mandamus litigation currently pending in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in connection with military commission proceedings. It's like sitting in a Fed Courts class, except with worse jokes (doesn't matter who your professor is, she or he surely was funnier than this). Then again, the topic turns out to be rather important for the larger questions surrounding the ability of the military commission system to move forward, so maybe it's worth it. Maybe. Stick around, though, and you'll be treated (again, probably not the right word) to an overview of the IHL/LOAC issues that were on the table at the recent Transatlantic Dialogue on International Law and Armed Conflict, which will give you a bit of perspective on the sort of questions that law of war experts think are especially interesting these days. That's followed by a civil-military relations discussion, one that pays particular attention to the origins and evolution of the statute that forbids serving military officers from holding certain civilian government positions (a cheap ploy to bring the recent Trump administration personnel moves within the scope of the podcast? maybe so, my friend, maybe so). Last, and least, the good professors wrap with a spoiler-packed review of Game of Thrones Episode 3, which aired a few days ago. One of these guys thinks that Tyrion's reputation for strategic acumen is super-overrated...

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello from Austin and welcome to episode 29 of the National Security Law podcast, brought to you by the Strauss Center at the University of Texas.
0:18.3	I'm Bobby Chesney.
0:19.6	And I'm Steve Blodick and Bobby, I lost my Game of
0:22.2	Thrones bet. Oh, but it's, you know, it's bad for us to immediately start talking Game of Thrones now.
0:28.2	I'm just saying I lost the bet. Well, you know, folks would have to think really seriously about
0:32.2	what the bet was. If you're already reaching to pause this because you haven't watched the third episode. Don't worry. No, no, no. It was a very limited spoiler. All right. We will spoil nothing. Stay tuned
0:43.2	until the end of the show when we start getting frivolous. Bobby, it's August? It is August 1st. It is Tuesday afternoon, August 1st, and the dog days of summer are here. Classes are looming in the fall,
0:55.6	Steve. What national security-related stuff do you have on the schedule for fall or spring this
1:00.6	year? So in the fall, I'm teaching first year constitutional law, which is always a bit of a
1:04.7	national security class. Yep. I think I'm teaching right down the hall at the exact same time.
1:08.2	I think we have students in the same section, so we'll get to compare some notes. That's right. And I'm teaching a seminar on military justice
1:14.6	and jurisdiction, a topic near and dear to my heart. That'll be great. And the spring fed courts,
1:18.9	which, you know, it's not really a national security topic. But now, but these days, and according to the things we're going to talk about in this episode, I guess it is.
1:29.3	I've got Conlaw like you do.
1:42.2	And then in the fall, I've got one of our cybersecurity foundation courses, the one that's going to focus on mapping out the government, private sector players, the rules of the road and some of the larger consideration.
1:43.8	So the non-technical course.
1:48.0	And this is with a friend of the pod, Matt Tate? Well, Matt's got a companion course. He's going to do a mirror image course that's entirely tech focused that doesn't assume any institutional or legal
1:52.3	knowledge. I'm doing the reverse. And then in the spring, we're going to jointly teach a
1:56.6	colloquium course. We're going to bring people into town to talk about cutting edge issues. Very cool. And I should say, you know, we're 29 episodes in and Matt Tate is to date the only guest of the pod.
2:05.7	That's true. That's true. You know, we don't really do the guest speaker segment, but I have a feeling we'll have our opportunities.
2:11.0	Especially this fall, we've got some people coming through. No doubt about it. So we thought we'd sort of preview quickly what we're going to talk about today. Obviously, we have some stuff to say about Game of Thrones at the end, but, you know, this is actually the national security law podcast, not the Westerosi security podcast.
2:24.9	This is true.
	...

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