ABSTRACT
As new technologies make possible new modes of war, they cause tension in the previously prevailing conceptual categories. This is evident, as the practice of targeted killing by governments has increased in frequency and prominence, largely due to the American use of armed drones around the world. The essays in this special issue explore how norms, rules, and laws that many people thought were settled have been roiled by new technologies of targeted killing. This includes rules on sovereignty, territory, due process, and the distinction between civilian and combatant. The essays sketch an implicit research program around the recursive relation between rules and practice. I draw these out into a more general model for scholarship at the boundaries between law and politics and between concepts and practices.
