The case was a civil action against four officials, including General David Petraeus, then Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Leon Panetta, then Secretary of Defense. The father of Anwar al-Awlaki brought the lawsuit. A terrorist leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Awlaki had been a master propagandist who allegedly inspired the mass shootings at the U.S. army base at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, and masterminded an attempted attack on an American airplane. His son was killed accidentally two weeks later in a drone strike against Samir Khan, a publicist in the same al-Qaeda offshoot.

Although Judge Collyer, a George W. Bush appointee who also sits on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, ultimately dismissed the case in April 2014, the lawsuit raised fundamental legal issues that have been the subject of ongoing debate regarding how U.S. laws are construed.

The judge's remarks also raised much broader issues about the nature of contemporary warfare and the changes in the roles of the military vis-à-vis the many different civilian actors with whom it works. This shift in roles has been especially dramatic since 9/11. Along with senior civilian leadership, Congress at the policy level, and diplomats and aid workers at the operational level, many more civilians are now relevant in any discussion of civil-military relations. They include the CIA in a paramilitary role; almost every U.S. federal government agency and many agencies at state and local levels; the U.S. courts; and a growing army of civilian contractors, many of whom are ex-military currently performing quasi-military roles