"Preface" [2017] ELECD 1266; in Ohlin, David Jens (ed), "Research Handbook on Remote Warfare" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) xi

Book Title: Research Handbook on Remote Warfare

Editor(s): Ohlin, David Jens

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781784716981

Section Title: Preface

Number of pages: 2

Extract:

Preface


For this volume, I assembled an unsurpassed group of international law
experts on the concept of remote warfare. Unfortunately, the volume is
missing one key contributor. There is no chapter from Michael Lewis,
professor of law at Ohio Northern University, and a former Top Gun F-14
navigator. Mike was scheduled to participate in the project but died, at
the premature age of 50, at 10:47 p.m. on Sunday, 21 June 2015.
I met Mike Lewis during my first year of law teaching at Cornell Law
School.1 Mike was scheduled to give a lecture at the law school about
torture and I was invited to give a commentary on his presentation. Mike
had pre-circulated the paper that the presentation was based on. I
disagreed with his thesis and pressed him sharply on its details during the
event. His argument had the virtue of proposing a very workable standard
for defining torture, but I felt it yielded counter-intuitive results for
particular reasons that I articulated during the event. Afterwards, I was
worried that I might have offended Mike, but it was not the case.
Immediately after he got home, he wrote me a lovely note saying how
much he appreciated our substantive exchange and was grateful that I had
taken the time and energy to respond to his scholarship. He was a true
scholar and intellectual.
In the ensuing five years, I spent much time reading and learning from
Mike's other articles on IHL. ...