Policing SysAdmin-like contractors

ARTICLE: New Law Could Subject Civilians to Military Trial: Provision Aimed at Contractors, but Some Fear It Will Sweep Up Other Workers, By Griff Witte, Washington Post, January 15, 2007; Page A01

On using military courts to police the SysAdmin activities of private security firms: this new rule set was inevitable, as are the fears of a slippery slope toward its overly expansive use.

If this was a purely U.S. question, we'd all be comforted by the self-correcting mechanism that is the U.S. court system, but where is that rule-set modulator on this issue internationally?

And please don't say the U.N., cause that's too scary in terms of bias toward state sovereignty (a lovingly quaint 20th century convention). In reality, the function is logically located in an International Criminal Court-like entity (though I confess ignorance as to what extent that body creates lasting and pervasive case law). But the trick with that is that I've always maintained that the ICC is Core law extended to the Gap (much as the beer commercials' "man law" aims futilely at corralling those uppity women!), meaning the ICC really codifies a temporally and geographically limited rule set (i.e., it applies to lawless Gap environments only insofar as they remain lawless--as in, join the Core and graduate out of ICC's effective jurisdiction).

In short, complex stuff, dynamically re-rendered depending on time and space.

Very Enterra-like, in that way.

Comments

[Thomas Pamelia]

Problem Solved:

If you are a contractor working in a contingency operation or full-out warzone, you are required to sign off your rights as a civilian and your right to a jury of your peers in a situation where you have been charged with wrongdoing on foreign soil.They do important, hard work along side our military, why shouldn't they be held to the same standards?The argument regarding the possible filtering of news/journalism under the UCMJ is defunct - why can't our US court system act as a check/balance over it all?