Selling Arms, Waiving Rights: The Structural Failure of US Human Rights Law in Weapons Transfers

The United States is the world's largest arms exporter and a professed champion of international human rights. This article identifies a critical analytical gap: the arms transfer legal framework—the Leahy Laws, Section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act, and the Arms Export Control Act—is architecturally designed to produce the appearance of human rights conditionality while preserving executive discretion to transfer weapons regardless of rights violations. Through legal analysis, historical case studies of Yemen and Gaza, and institutional critique, this article demonstrates that non-enforcement is a structural design feature, not a malfunction, and proposes a framework for genuine reform.