ABSTRACT
In the middle of October 1962, the Robert F. Kennedy administration spent thirteen anxious days considering whether to use military force in response to menacing communist activities on a Caribbean island. This chapter examines some legal principles cited by the State Department Legal Adviser's Office to justify action by the United States. Davis Robinson's letter of February 10, 1984 was actually drafted by Deputy Legal Adviser Michael Kozak. Robinson deemed the letter a better legal defense of Ronald Reagan's Grenada invasion than the defenses that had earlier been advanced in support of Kennedy's Cuba quarantine and of Johnson's Dominican Republic intervention. On the afternoon of October 19, "Bloody Wednesday," Maurice Bishop and scores of other Grenadians perished in the gruesome aftermath of an unsuccessful attempt to return Bishop to power. The People's Revolutionary Government of Maurice Bishop suspended the 1967 Constitution, proclaiming instead a series of "People's Laws.".
