Law of Armed Conflict

In this volume, internationally renowned researchers attempt to address the fundamental and applied ethical and legal problems posed by emerging military technologies and present their insights.

New technologies, new geopolitical alignments, new interests and vulnerabilities, and other developments are changing how, why, and by whom conflict will be waged. Just as militaries must plan ahead for an environment in which threats, alliances, capabilities, and even the domains in which they fight will differ from today, they must plan for international legal constraints that may differ, too. This volume considers how law and institutions for creating, interpreting, and enforcing it might look two decades ahead.

Offering a comprehensive assessment of Hague Law, it explores questions of definitions and accountability and navigates the substantive rules and their application to different types of warfare.

International law requires that, before any new weapon is developed, purchased or modified, the legality of its use must be determined. This book offers the first comprehensive and systemic analysis of the law mandating such assessments - Article 36 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions. Underpinned by empirical research, the book explores the challenges the weapons review authorities are facing when examining emerging military technology, such as autonomous weapons systems and (autonomous) cyber capabilities.

This book explores the most relevant trends in the development of international humanitarian law (IHL), including the absence of formal law-making by states, informal law-making through manual processes and the increasing role of sub and non-state actors.

This monograph examines and analyses the phenomenon of non-binding instruments (also known as 'soft law') in the law of armed conflict, or international humanitarian law.

This analysis of the legal implications of non-international armed conflicts explores the rules regulating the conduct of internal hostilities, as well as the consequences of intervention by foreign States, the role of the UN Security Council, the effects of recognition, State responsibility for wrongdoing by both Governments and insurgents, the interface with the law of human rights and the notion of war crimes. The author addresses both conceptual and specific issues, such as the complexities of 'failing' States or the recruitment and use of child soldiers.

This book analyses all relevant questions of State responsibility and attribution arising from the conduct of rebels and governments in the context of civil wars and rebellions aiming at the establishment of a new government or the creation of a new State.

The War Lawyers examines the laws of war as applied by military lawyers to aerial targeting operations carried out by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Israel military in Gaza. Drawing on interviews with military lawyers and others, this book explains why some lawyers became integrated in the chain of command whereby military targets are identified and attacked, whether by manned aircraft, drones, and/or ground forces, and with what results. This book shows just how important law and military lawyers have become in the conduct of contemporary warfare, and how it is understood.