Future Challenges: Targeted Killing and Drone Warfare: How We Came to Debate Whether There Is a “Legal Geography of War”

Targeted killing and drone warfare across wide geographic ranges and sovereign borders have produced much anxiety in the international law and advocacy communities and among scholars, human rights activists, and government and UN officials. It is no longer obvious where the laws of war take hold and where ordinary domestic law—including human rights law—applies instead. This essay argues that the traditional legal condition for applying the laws of war—the “conduct of hostilities”—is and continues to be the correct legal standard.