Hew Strachan Seminar - The Laws of War
The seminar will focus on The Laws of War, exploring how they influence public debates and its role in shaping policy, strategy and tactics.
| Date | Time | Location | Tickets |
|---|---|---|---|
|
22. Oct
- 23. Oct 2024
|
09:00
- 15:00
|
The United Nations Charter of 1945 outlawed war except in cases of national self-defence but wars, inter-state, non-state and mixtures of both, continue. Given the frequency of war and the accusations of war crimes that ensue, is law condemned to lag behind war, reflecting it more than it changes it? Or is law inching towards a position where it achieves its ultimate ambitions, to contain it and limit its effects, and ultimately to prevent its use?
There are about 100 conflicts variously defined going on in the world in 2024, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The law has not prevented war, but it has created a norm against its use. It has set much of the tempo and context in public debates about current forms of armed conflict, most recently in Ukraine and Gaza, but also in the ‘global war on terror’ following the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
Playing a role shaping both policy, strategy and tactics, Western armed forces are expected to obey it, taking legal advice before they open fire, showing discrimination in whom they target, and issuing rules of engagement for use in the field.
Topics:
- Ukraine and Gaza: A crisis for the laws of war
- Containing war: The evolution of Ius in bello
- Preventing war: The evolution of Ius ad bellum
- The challenge of non-International armed conflict
- Forever wars: Using law to enable war
- When is a war not a war?
- War crimes and their punishment
Seminar dinner on October 22nd at 7:00 PM
Reading list
General
Andrew Clapham, War: Clarendon Law Series (Oxford, 2021)
Thematically organised and written for a series that tests the ideas behind law.
Andrew Clapham and Paola Gaeta, The Oxford Handbook of International Law in Armed Conflict (Oxford, 2014)
A collection of thematic essays, some more helpful than others, but including specific chapters on land, sea and air.
Adam Roberts and Richard Guelff, Documents on the Laws of War (3rd edn, Oxford, 2010)
A basic reference.
History
Geoffrey Best, Humanity in warfare: the modern history of the international law of armed conflict (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980)
Pioneering in its day; some aspects now dated but still the most accessible account.
Stephen C. Neff, War and the Law of Nations: A General History (Cambridge, 2005)
The current standard treatment.
John Fabian Witt, Lincoln’s Code: the laws of war in America’s history (New York: Free Press, 2012)
Current Issues
Orde F. Kittrie, Lawfare: law as a weapon of war (Oxford, 2016)
Lawfare was a concept developed to explain the adaptability of non-state actors, but this account explains its adoption by states.
Samuel Moyn, Humane: how the United States abandoned peace and reinvented war (London: Verso, 2022)
The case for the prosecution on the US use of its domestic law to circumvent international law since 9/11.