InWars of Law, Tanisha M. Fazal assesses the unintended consequences of the proliferation of the laws of war for the commencement, conduct, and conclusion of wars over the course of the past one ...hundred fifty years.
After a brief history of the codification of international humanitarian law (IHL), Fazal outlines three main arguments: early laws of war favored belligerents but more recent additions have constrained them; this shift may be attributable to a growing divide between lawmakers and those who must comply with IHL; and lawmakers have been consistently inattentive to how rebel groups might receive these laws.
By using the laws of war strategically, Fazal suggests, belligerents in both interstate and civil wars relate those laws to their big-picture goals. InWars of Law, we learn that, as codified IHL proliferates and changes in character-with an ever-greater focus on protected persons-states fighting interstate wars become increasingly reluctant to step over any bright lines that unequivocally oblige them to comply with IHL. On the other hand, Fazal argues, secessionists fighting wars for independence are more likely to engage with the laws of war because they have strong incentives to persuade the international community that, if admitted to the club of states, they will be good and capable members of that club.
Why have states stopped issuing formal declarations of war? Why have states stopped concluding formal peace treaties? Why are civil wars especially likely to end in peace treaties today? Addressing such basic questions about international conflict, Fazal provides a lively and intriguing account of the implications of the laws of war.
In Lawmaking under Pressure, Giovanni Mantilla analyzes the origins and development of the international humanitarian treaty rules that now exist to regulate internal armed conflict. Until well into ...the twentieth century, states allowed atrocious violence as an acceptable product of internal conflict. Why have states created international laws to control internal armed conflict? Why did states compromise their national security by accepting these international humanitarian constraints? Why did they create these rules at improbable moments, as European empires cracked, freedom fighters emerged, and fears of communist rebellion spread? Mantilla explores the global politics and diplomatic dynamics that led to the creation of such laws in 1949 and in the 1970s. By the 1949 Diplomatic Conference that revised the Geneva Conventions, most countries supported legislation committing states and rebels to humane principles of wartime behavior and to the avoidance of abhorrent atrocities, including torture and the murder of non-combatants. However, for decades, states had long refused to codify similar regulations concerning violence within their own borders. Diplomatic conferences in Geneva twice channeled humanitarian attitudes alongside Cold War and decolonization politics, even compelling reluctant European empires Britain and France to accept them. Lawmaking under Pressure documents the tense politics behind the making of humanitarian laws that have become touchstones of the contemporary international normative order. Mantilla not only explains the pressures that resulted in constraints on national sovereignty but also uncovers the fascinating international politics of shame, status, and hypocrisy that helped to produce the humanitarian rules now governing internal conflict.
The American presidency has long tested the capacity of the system of checks and balances to constrain executive power, especially in times of war. While scholars have examined presidents starting ...military conflicts without congressional authorization or infringing on civil liberties in the name of national security, Stuart Streichler focuses on the conduct of hostilities. Using the treatment of war-on-terror detainees under President George W. Bush as a case study, he integrates international humanitarian law into a constitutional analysis of the repercussions of presidential war powers for human rights around the world. Putting President Bush’s actions in a wider context, Presidential Accountability in Wartime begins with a historical survey of the laws of war, with particular emphasis on the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the Nuremberg Tribunal. Streichler then reconstructs the decision-making process that led to the president’s approval of interrogation methods that violated Geneva’s mandate to treat wartime captives humanely. While taking note of various accountability options—from within the executive branch to the International Criminal Court—the book illustrates the challenge in holding presidents personally responsible for violating the laws of war through an in-depth analysis of the actions taken by Congress, the Supreme Court, and the public in response. In doing so, this book not only raises questions about whether international humanitarian law can moderate wartime presidential behavior but also about the character of the presidency and the American constitutional system of government.
This article identifies and evaluates key international legal aspects concerning three notions that have figured in debates on war crimes involving an autonomous weapon system (AWS): responsibility, ...liability and accountability. It focuses on the general contours of the existing international law of armed conflict, also known as international humanitarian law (IHL), and related fields, concepts and institutions. Regarding responsibility, this article examines, on one hand, the international responsibility of a state for an internationally wrongful act related to a breach of a rule of IHL involving an AWS that may form the basis of a war crime and, on the other hand, individual criminal responsibility for a war crime involving an AWS. As for liability, this article outlines three international legal concepts of state liability potentially related to a war crime involving an AWS. Finally, this article sets out an, at least, legally adjacent concept of accountability that involves an explanation of the conduct related to a war crime involving an AWS and imposing political, legal, social or other consequences where such an explanation is absent or insufficient.
Foreword Anan Alsheikh Haidar
Journal of international criminal justice,
08/2023, Letnik:
21, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
More than a decade since the start of the so-called Arab Spring, this symposium on 'Arab Perspectives on International Criminal Justice' marks an important step forward in the ongoing discussion and ...critical reflection on various practices and approaches to international criminal and transitional justice in the Arab region. For the purposes of this symposium, the terms 'Arab region' or 'Arab World' will be used to refer to the 22 Arabicspeaking countries in the North Africa and Middle East (MENA) region. Although MENA is a commonly used term and is often used to refer to the region in which the Arab countries are located, use of this term is avoided in this symposium as there is no standardized list of included countries and the definition can at times have up to 27 countries, some of which are not Arab countries.
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