Oona Hathaway and Craig Jones

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast

On this week’s episode, Oona Hathaway, professor of law at Yale Law School, and Dr. Craig Jones, lecturer in political geography at Newcastle University, discuss their views on law’s role in war and national security. Professor Hathaway’s recent article, National Security Lawyering in the Post-War Era: Can Law Constrain Power?, argues that our current system lacks external constraints on executive branch national security lawyers and suggests division of powers and increased accountability could help remedy these issues. In The War Lawyers: The United States, Israel, and Juridicial Warfare, Dr. Jones focuses more specifically on how military operations have come to rely on lawyers and discusses the consequences of a system where law and war are co-constitutive. The professors discuss where they find common ground and where they diverge, and answer the question of whether there is too much or too little law in war.