In a subcommittee hearing Wednesday, Congress sought to explore the legality of unmanned drone attacks, a controversial and politically sensitive issue that U.S. officials have shied away from firmly defining. Though U.S. officials typically refrain from commenting on such attacks, most have been used to target suspected military hideouts along the Pakistan Afghanistan border, a region where the U.S. is the only power to have known drone capability. Several law professors, whose views of the legal landscape differed considerably, were invited to testify to shed light on the scope of legal issues. The law professors offered varied testimony on the scope of permissible conduct; some argued that because the U.S. is engaged in a war, it is entitled to use the full scope of its military capability, while others argued that only lawful combatants, and not military contractors, are entitled to use such force.
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