More than a decade ago, I asked a question that seemed fit for a Black Mirror episode: Who cannot be put on a president’s extrajudicial kill list?

Only that query wasn’t something out of a dystopian sci-fi series. It was in response to some real-world news: in the name of fighting terrorism, President Barack Obama had asserted the power to order executions without a judge, jury, or trial.

At the time, some of us were concerned that the power would be abused both by Obama’s administration (which extrajudicially executed three US citizens) and by future presidents. Those concerns intensified after a federal court rubber-stamped Obama’s kill list, and after Obama’s spokesman brushed off the drone killing of an American teenager by saying he “should have [had] a far more responsible father.”