This collection of papers provides a commentary on and critique of Grotius' "De Jure Pacs ac Belli". It is the product of a joint research project on Grotius' book, carried out by the Research Group on the Fundamental Theory of International Law, headed by the editor. An awareness among a group of young international law scholars in Japan of the need to reconsider the methodology and fundamental problems of international law led to the formation of the group in 1976. Its purpose is to carry out basic research on the theory of international law, including its validity as law, the normativity and rationalizing function of international law, and the relations between international law and, in particular, international politics, justice, war, structural violence and colonialism. Through these researches, the group seeks to clarify its own views, to understand current problems of international law within their philosophical, political, historical and multi-cultural context, and ultimately to develop an approach which can overcome the defects of the so-called "positivistic" approach without reducing the science of international law to an ideology whose actual role is to justify the value

Individuals can assume-and be assigned-multiple roles throughout a conflict: perpetrators can be victims, and vice versa; heroes can be reassessed as complicit and compromised. However, accepting this more accurate representation of the narrativized identities of violence presents a conundrum for accountability and justice mechanisms premised on clear roles. This book considers these complex, sometimes overlapping roles, as people respond to mass violence in various contexts, from international tribunals to NGO-based social movements. Bringing the literature on perpetration in conversation with the more recent field of victim studies, it suggests a new, more effective, and reflexive approach to engagement in post-conflict contexts. Long-term positive peace requires understanding the narrative dynamics within and between groups, demonstrating that the blurring of victim-perpetrator boundaries, and acknowledging their overlapping roles, is a crucial part of peacebuilding processes. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This book analyses the multi-faceted impact armed conflict has on investment treaties. Refuting the common association of the outbreak of hostilities with the termination or suspension of treaties, it not only makes a case for the continuity of investment treaties. The book argues that the impact of armed conflict on such agreements goes far beyond these questions: Changed factual circumstances and public interests as well as international humanitarian law heavily influence the application and interpretation of investment protection standards. The book argues that investment treaties can and must channel these effects to remain effective during armed conflict and strike a fair balance between investor and public interests. It shows ways in which contextual and systemic interpretation, respect for reasonable state action, and careful treaty design can ensure that investment treaties continue to fulfil their purpose of strengthening compliance with legal rules also in times of armed conflict.

In Malone v. UK (Plenary 1984), the right to an effective domestic remedy in the European Convention on Human Rights Article 13 was famously described as one of the most obscure clauses in the Convention. Since then, the European Court of Human Rights has reinforced the scope and application of the right. Through an analysis of virtually all of the Court's judgments concerning Article 13, the book exhaustively accounts for the development and current scope and content of the right. The book also provides normative recommendations on how the Court could further develop the right, most notably how it could be a tool to regulate the relationship between domestic and international protection of human rights. In doing so, the book situates itself within larger debates on the enforcement of the entire Convention such as the principle of subsidiarity and the procedural turn in the Court's case law.

This book argues for a more moderate approach to history-writing in international criminal adjudication by articulating the elements of a "responsible history" normative framework. The question of whether international criminal courts and tribunals (ICTs) ought to write historical narratives has gained renewed relevance in the context of the recent turn to history in international criminal law, the growing attention to the historical legacies of the ad hoc Tribunals and the minimal attention paid to historical context in the first judgment of the International Criminal Court. The starting point for this discussion is that, in cases of mass atrocities, prosecutors and judges are inevitably understood to be engaged in writing history and influencing collective memory, whether or not they so intend. Therefore, while writing history is an inescapable feature of ICTs, there is still today a significant lack of consensus over the proper place of this function. Since Hannah Arendt articulated her doctrine of strict legality, in response to the prosecutor's expansive didactic approach in Eichmann, the legal debate on the subject has been largely polarised between restrictive and expansive approaches to history-writing in mass atrocity trials. What has been noticeably missing from this debate is the middle ground. The contribution this book seeks to make is precisely to articulate a framework that occupies that ground. The book asks: what are the lenses through which judges of ICTs interpret historical events, what kind of histories do ICTs write? and what kinds of histories should ICTs produce? Its arguments for a more moderate approach to history-writing are based on three distinct, but interrelated grounds: (1) Truth and Justice; (2) Right to Truth; and (3) Legal Epistemology. Different target audiences may benefit from this book. Court officials and legal practitioners may find the normative framework developed herein useful in addressing the tensions between the competing objectives of ICTs and, in particular, in assessing the value of the history-writing function. Lawyers, historians and other academics may also find the analysis of the strengths, constraints and blind spots of the historical narratives written by ICTs interesting. This issue is particularly timely in view of current debates on the legacies of ICTs. Aldo Zammit Borda is Director of the Centre for Access to Justice and Inclusion at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK.

Cultural rights promote cultural and scientific creativity. Transformative and empowering, they also enable the pursuit of knowledge and understanding, thereby working as atrocity prevention tools. The Transforming Power of Cultural Rights argues that this gives these rights a central role to play in promoting the full human personality and in realizing all other human rights. Looking at the work of the UN Special Rapporteurs in the field of cultural rights as well as UNESCO's efforts, Helle Porsdam addresses the question of how a universal human rights agenda can include a dialogue that recognizes the importance of cultural diversity without sliding into cultural relativism. She argues that cultural rights offer a useful international arena and discourse in which to explain and negotiate cultural meanings when controversies arise. This places them at the center of human rights - and at the center of law and humanities.

The book examines the processes through which the resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly acquire legal significance through state practice. By using an empirically-grounded method of inquiry, it examines how states attribute legal significance to resolutions in three different contexts: at the time of adoption, within domestic law and in international practice. The book shows that, contrary to the existent theories on the legal significance of resolutions, the General Assembly is not a unitary actor. It also demonstrates that the concept of legal significance of resolutions is not predetermined or static. While resolutions are often framed in normative language, they acquire legal significance only to the extent that states find it desirable or convenient, depending on context and circumstances. Consequently, the attribution of legal significance to resolutions turns out to be a manifestation of state will to abide by their content, not the will of the General Assembly.

Who has the right to wage war? The answer to this question constitutes one of the most fundamental organizing principles of any international order. Under contemporary international humanitarian law, this right is essentially restricted to sovereign states. It has been conventionally assumed that this arrangement derives from the ideas of the late-sixteenth century jurist Alberico Gentili. Claire Vergerio argues that this story is a myth, invented in the late 1800s by a group of prominent international lawyers who crafted what would become the contemporary laws of war. These lawyers reinterpreted Gentili's writings on war after centuries of marginal interest, and this revival was deeply intertwined with a project of making the modern sovereign state the sole subject of international law. By uncovering the genesis and diffusion of this narrative, Vergerio calls for a profound reassessment of when and with what consequences war became the exclusive prerogative of sovereign states.

Drawing upon Robbie Sabel's first-hand involvement with many legal negotiations in the Arab-Israeli conflict, International Law and the Arab-Israeli Conflict examines international law in relation to the conflict by analysing its major events and agreements, both historical and contemporary. Outlining the role of international law from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire until the present day, it considers the legal elements of the various peace treaties that Israel has signed with its neighbouring Arab States. Using his expertise as a professor, practitioner and ambassador, Sabel endeavours to represent both sides of the conflict, offering a wealth of counter-arguments and adding his own legal interpretations. With this valuable resource, students and researchers working within a range of disciplines can fully appreciate the role of international law in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Reimagining the National Security State provides the first comprehensive picture of the toll that US government policies took on civil liberties, human rights, and the rule of law in the name of the war on terror. Looking through the lenses of theory, history, law, and policy, the essays in this volume illuminate the ways in which liberal democracy suffered at the hands of policymakers in the name of national security. The contributors, who are leading experts and practitioners in fields ranging from political theory to evolutionary biology, discuss the vast expansion of executive powers, the excessive reliance secrecy, and the exploration of questionable legal territory in matters of detention, criminal justice, targeted killings, and warfare. This book gives the reader an eye-opening window onto the historical precedents and lasting impact the security state has had on civil liberties, human rights and, the rule of law in the name of the war on terror.

This is open access volume of the NL ARMS offers an interdisciplinary view on the domain of Compliance and Integrity in International Military Trade (CIIMT), integrating defence economics, international law, arms export control frameworks and policies, information management, organizational sciences and ethics. Although, in academia, and from an interdisciplinary perspective, CIIMT constitutes a relatively novel research domain, across private and public defence-related sectors, the subject evokes high levels of attention and interest, instigating a need for critical thinking, reflection and creativity to address ensuing multi-faceted issues and problems. The Faculty of Military Sciences at the Netherlands Defence Academy extends an in-house MSc programme on CIIMT, which, by integrating practice-based and scientific-based knowledge, aims to contribute to this need. The MSc programme on CIIMT is concerned with exploring, analysing, understanding, explaining, controlling and improving the military dimension in international military trade. More particularly, CIIMT studies managerial questions regarding strategic trade control of military and dual-use goods and services. CIIMT ties in with the Netherlands Defence Academy's vision on scientific education, embedded in the reflective practitioners' paradigm uniting both management and leadership skills needed to decide and operate in high-tension and high-risk knowledge intensive environments. The Faculty of Military Sciences uses the reflective practitioners' paradigm to refer to critical thinking, reflection and Bildung that characterize its thinking doers, the so-called Thinking Soldiers, either at the academic Bachelor's or Master's level. In view of the complexity of the international trade regarding military and dual-use goods and services, the rapid evolvement of strategic trade control and frameworks, and its importance to procurement processes, defence organizations require innovative thinking doers, who, based on an in-depth understanding, from an interdisciplinary perspective can be expected to find - and take responsibility for - creative solutions to problems. NL ARMS 2021 comprises, amongst others, contributions from students and lecturers partaking in this programme. All the editors are affiliated with the Faculty of Military Sciences of the Netherlands Defence Academy in Breda, The Netherlands.

Attacks on humanitarian aid operations are both a symptom and a weapon of modern warfare, and as armed groups increasingly target aid workers for violence, relief operations are curtailed in places where civilians are most in need. This book provides an in-depth analysis of the challenges to humanitarian action in warzones, the risk management and negotiation strategies that hold the most promise for aid organizations, and an ethical framework from which to tackle the problem. By combining rigorous research findings with structural historical analysis and first-person accounts of armed attacks on aid workers, the author proposes a reframed ethos of humanitarian professionalism, decoupled from organizational or political interests, and centered on optimizing outcomes for the people it serves.

The notion that a state that emerges victorious in war is entitled to claim sovereignty over conquered territory in virtue of military victory or conquest was a recognized principle of international law until the early years of last century. This study is an inquiry into the place of the right of conquest in international relations since the early sixteenth century, and the causes and consequences of its demise in the twentieth century.
Part 1 examines the theoretical foundations of the right of conquest, its historical importance both in the establishment of the European colonial empires and in the relations between the European states themselves, and provides an analysis of the traditional law of conquest. Part 2 shows how the First World War, which led to the rise of self-determination and to calls for the prohibition of aggressive war, prompted the reconstruction of international law and the consequent rejection of the right of conquest.
A number of case studies of the seizure of territory since 1945 - including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, Goa, the Falkland Islands, East Timor, and Kuwait - are used to evaluate the content and effectiveness of the modern law.
Dr Korman concludes by examining the merits and defects of the abolition of the right of conquest from the standpoints of international order and justice.
The Right of Conquest has been widely praised. It was quoted in the International Court of Justice in 2004, in submissions supporting the UN General Assembly's request for an Advisory Opinion on the legality of Israel's construction of the Separation Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Laws and norms that focus on women's lives in conflict have proliferated across the regimes of international humanitarian law, international criminal law, international human rights law and the United Nations Security Council. While separate institutions, with differing powers of monitoring and enforcement, implement these laws and norms, the activities of regimes overlap. Women's Rights in Armed Conflict under International Law is the first book to account for this pluralism and institutional diversity. This book identifies key aspects of how different regimes regulate women's rights in conflict, and how they interact. Using country case studies to reveal the practical implications of the fragmented protection of women's rights in conflict, this book offers a dynamic account of how regimes and institutions interact, the extent to which they reinforce each other, and the tensions and gaps in regulation that emerge.

By adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the legality of the use of autonomous weapons systems under international law. It examines different arguments presented by States, roboticists and scholars to demonstrate the challenges such systems will create for the laws of war. This study examines how technology of warfare seeks to increase the dissociation of risk and communication between weapons and their human operators. Furthermore, it explains how algorithms might give rise to 'errors' on the battlefield that cannot be directly attributed to human operators. Against this backdrop, Dr Seixas-Nunes examines three distinct legal frameworks: the distinction between the legality of weapons and the laws of targeting; different mechanisms of individual accountability and the importance of recovering the category of 'dolus eventualis' for programmers and technicians and, finally, State responsibility for violations of the laws of war caused by weapons' software errors.

The international community is too often focused on responding to the latest cyber-attack instead of addressing the reality of pervasive and persistent cyber conflict. From ransomware against the city government of Baltimore to state-sponsored campaigns targeting electrical grids in Ukraine and the U.S., we seem to have relatively little bandwidth left over to ask what we can hope for in terms of 'peace' on the Internet, and how to get there. It's also important to identify the long-term implications for such pervasive cyber insecurity across the public and private sectors, and how they can be curtailed. This edited volume analyzes the history and evolution of cyber peace and reviews recent international efforts aimed at promoting it, providing recommendations for students, practitioners and policymakers seeking an understanding of the complexity of international law and international relations involved in cyber peace. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

In recent years, transitional justice has become increasingly international in its scope. Due to ongoing animosities, lack of political will, and the absence of credible governing or judicial institutions, international organizations, donors, and NGOs advocate for transitional justice initiatives like truth commissions or special tribunals - alongside national actors, like civil society and victims groups. This book examines how international assistance affects transitional justice, and where power truly lies in making decisions about justice for victims of massive human rights abuse. The book finds that government donors typically lack strategies for transitional justice, they struggle with information deficits, and they are constrained by short-term approaches that do not give enough attention to what is often a weak and divided civil society sector. All the authors have both practical and scholarly perspectives on transitional justice. Country case studies are provided, including descriptions of the challenges in developing data on transitional justice financing.

In all but the rarest circumstances, the world's deadly conflicts are ended not through outright victory, but through a series of negotiations. Not all of these negotiations, however, yield a durable peace. To successfully mitigate conflict drivers, the parties in conflict must address a number of puzzles, such as whether and how to share and/or re-establish a state's monopoly of force, reallocate the ownership and management of natural resources, modify the state structure, or provide for a path toward external self-determination. Successfully resolving these puzzles requires the parties to navigate a number of conundrums and make choices and design mechanisms that are appropriate to the particular context of the conflict, and which are most likely to lead to a durable peace. Lawyering Peace aims to help future negotiators build better and more durable peace agreements through a rigorous examination of how other parties have resolved these puzzles and associated conundrums.

In all but the rarest circumstances, the world's deadly conflicts are ended not through outright victory, but through a series of negotiations. Not all of these negotiations, however, yield a durable peace. To successfully mitigate conflict drivers, the parties in conflict must address a number of puzzles, such as whether and how to share and/or re-establish a state's monopoly of force, reallocate the ownership and management of natural resources, modify the state structure, or provide for a path toward external self-determination. Successfully resolving these puzzles requires the parties to navigate a number of conundrums and make choices and design mechanisms that are appropriate to the particular context of the conflict, and which are most likely to lead to a durable peace. Lawyering Peace aims to help future negotiators build better and more durable peace agreements through a rigorous examination of how other parties have resolved these puzzles and associated conundrums.

International Refugee Law and the Protection of Stateless Persons examines the extent to which the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees protectsde jure stateless persons. While de jure stateless persons are clearly protected by the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, this book seeks to explore the extent to which such persons are also entitled to refugee status. The questions addressed include the following: When is a person 'without a nationality' for the purpose of the 1951 Refugee Convention? What constitutes one's country of former habitual residence as a proxy to one's country of nationality? When does being stateless give rise to a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons specified in the 1951 Refugee Convention and/or UNHCR mandate? What are the circumstances under which statelessness constitutes persecution or inhuman or degrading treatment? How are courts assessing individual risk or threat to stateless persons? The book draws on historical and contemporary interpretation of international law based on the travaux preparatoires to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its antecedents, academic writing, UNHCR policy and legal documents, UN Human Rights Council resolutions, UN Human Rights Committee general comments, UN Secretary General reports, and UN General Assembly resolutions. It is also based on original comparative analysis of existing jurisprudence worldwide relating to claims to refugee status based on or around statelessness. By examining statelessness through the prism of international refugee law, this book fills a critical gap in existing scholarship.

The most commonly cited justification for international criminal law is that it addresses crimes of such gravity that they "shock the conscience of humanity." From decisions about how to define crimes and when to exercise jurisdiction, to limitations on defences and sentencing determinations, gravity rhetoric permeates the discourse of international criminal law. Yet the concept of gravity has thus far remained highly undertheorized. This book uncovers the consequences for the regime's legitimacy of its heavy reliance on the poorly understood idea of gravity. Margaret M. deGuzman argues that gravity's ambiguity may at times enable a thin consensus to emerge around decisions, such as the creation of an institution or the definition of a crime, but that, increasingly, it undermines efforts to build a strong and resilient global justice community. The book suggests ways to reconceptualize gravity in line with global values and goals to better support the long-term legitimacy of international criminal law.

This book examines the law relating to the possession, threat or use of nuclear weapons. By addressing in logical sequence the law regarding sovereignty, the threat or use of force, the conduct of nuclear hostilities, neutrality, weapons law and war crimes, the book illustrates the topics that an effective national command, control and communications system for nuclear weapons must address. Guidance is given on intractable issues, such as the responsibilities of remote submarine commanders. The continuing relevance of the ICJ's Nuclear Advisory Opinion is assessed, and the prospects for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons are discussed. The book has been written in an accessible style so that it will be equally useful to lawyers and practitioners, including relevant commanders, politicians, policy staffs and academics. The objective is to state the law accurately and to explain its implications and provide practical guidance in this most sensitive area. This book is also available as open access.

This ambitious 2005 volume is a history of war, from the standpoint of international law, from the beginning of history to the present day. Its primary focus is on legal conceptions of war as such, rather than on the substantive or technical aspects of the law of war. It tells the story, in narrative form, of the interplay, through the centuries, between, on the one hand, legal ideas about war and, on the other hand, state practice in warfare. Its coverage includes reprisals, civil wars, UN enforcement and the war on terrorism. This book will interest historians, students of international relations and international lawyers.

This collection offers insights of the international humanitarian system, considering what constitutes humanitarianism in Asia-Pacific, and how it shapes policy and practice in the region and globally. It adds to the conversation on reforming the global humanitarian system by providing the space to share perspectives on humanitarian action from our place in the world. The authors answer these questions by focusing on a range of issues from national to sectoral perspectives to relations between 'traditional' and 'emerging' players, concluding that the dynamics of the humanitarian system from the perspectives of the Asia-Pacific are rooted in their localized experiences and built outwards. The first significant trend is that understandings of humanitarianism in the Asia-Pacific are primarily shaped by the experience of disasters at home. Second, national governments play a dominant role in humanitarian affairs in the region. Finally, the humanitarian landscape in the Asia-Pacific constitutes a diverse yet under-appreciated set of actors. This book is based on the RSIS Conference on Asia and the Humanitarian World held in 2019 in Singapore. It is relevant to students, scholars, practitioners and policymakers with an interest in humanitarian assistance, disaster management, strategic studies and international relations in Asia-Pacific.

The question of 'humanitarian intervention' has been a staple of international law for around 200 years, with a renewed interest in the history of the subject emerging in the last twenty years. This book provides a chronological account of the evolution of the discussion and uncovers the fictional narrative provided by international lawyers to support their conclusions on the subject, from justifications and arguments for 'humanitarian intervention', the misrepresentation of great power involvement in the Greek War of Independence in 1827, to the 'humanitarian intervention that never was', India's war with Pakistan in 1971. Relying on a variety of sources, some of them made available in English for the first time, the book provides an undogmatic, alternative history of the fight for the protection of human rights in international law.