International Humanitarian Law Commons^™

The Human Dimension Of Peace And Aggression, Chiara Redaelli

International Law Studies

Since the adoption of the Charter of the United Nations, the current international legal framework has drastically changed. In its traditional understanding, aggression is “the supreme international crime” aimed at protecting sovereignty and the territorial integrity of states. On the other hand, the U.N. Charter endorses an understanding of peace in the negative sense, that is, as mere absence of war. As human rights have gained momentum, they have helped reshape the legal landscape, a phenomenon referred to as the humanization of international law. How do peace and aggression fit within the humanized legal framework? This article will investigate the …

Will Cyber Autonomy Undercut Democratic Accountability?, Ashley Deeks

International Law Studies

In recent years, legislative bodies such as the U.S. Congress and the U.K. Parliament have struggled to maintain a role for themselves in government decisions to conduct military operations against foreign adversaries. Some of these challenges arise from constitutional structures, but they are also due to the changing nature of conflict: a shift away from large-scale kinetic operations and toward smaller-scale operations—including cyber operations—that are less visible and that do not require robust legislative support. These modern operations leave legislatures to engage in ex post and sometimes ineffective efforts to hold their executive branches accountable for international uses of force …

Autonomous Cyber Capabilities Below And Above The Use Of Force Threshold: Balancing Proportionality And The Need For Speed, Peter Margulies

International Law Studies

Protecting the cyber domain requires speedy responses. Mustering that speed will be a task reserved for autonomous cyber agents—software that chooses particular actions without prior human approval. Unfortunately, autonomous agents also suffer from marked deficits, including bias, unintelligibility, and a lack of contextual judgment. Those deficits pose serious challenges for compliance with international law principles such as proportionality.

In the jus ad bellum, jus in bello, and the law of countermeasures, compliance with proportionality reduces harm and the risk of escalation. Autonomous agent flaws will impair their ability to make the fine-grained decisions that proportionality entails. However, a …

Special Rules Of Attribution Of Conduct In International Law, Marko Milanovic

International Law Studies

Are there are any special rules of attribution in international law? Are there, in other words, imputational rules that are not recognized as such in general international law, but are specific to particular branches of international law? This is the first article to systematically analyze the notion of special rules of attribution in international law. In particular, it searches for such rules in international humanitarian law, the law on the use of force, and European human rights law.

The article argues that, to the extent special rules of attribution exist, they are rare and never uncontroversial. In most situations, putative …

Strategic Proportionality: Limitations On The Use Of Force In Modern Armed Conflicts, Noam Lubell, Amichai Cohen

International Law Studies

The nature of modern armed conflicts, combined with traditional interpretations of proportionality, poses serious challenges to the jus ad bellum goal of limiting and controlling wars. In between the jus ad bellum focus on decisions to use force, and the international humanitarian law (IHL) regulation of specific attacks, there is a far-reaching space in which the regulatory role of international law is bereft of much needed clarity. Perhaps the most striking example is in relation to overall casualties of war. If the jus ad bellum is understood as applying to the opening moments of the conflict, then it cannot provide …

The Unlawfulness Of A “Bloody Nose Strike” On North Korea, Kevin Jon Heller

International Law Studies

The United States has reportedly been debating whether to "react to some nuclear or missile test with a targeted strike against a North Korean facility to bloody Pyongyang’s nose and illustrate the high price the regime could pay for its behavior." This article asks a simple question: would such a “bloody nose strike” (BNS) violate the jus ad bellum?

Providing a coherent answer is complicated by the lack of clarity surrounding the United States’ planning. In particular, the U.S. government has not specified what kind of provocation it believes would justify launching a BNS, has not identified precisely what …

Twelve Key Questions On Self-Defense Against Non-State Actors, Terry D. Gill, Kinga Tibori-Szabó

International Law Studies

This article examines the most pertinent questions relating to the applicability of the right of self-defense to attacks conducted by non-State armed groups (NSAGs) acting independently of State control from the territory of one or more States against the territory of another State. These questions are approached from the perspective of legality (does the right of self-defense apply to attacks not mounted by or under the control of a State) and modality (assuming the applicability of self-defense to such attacks; how do the principles of necessity, proportionality and immediacy affect its application)? Starting with an assessment of the place of …