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Full-Text Articles in Law
Targeting And The Concept Of Intent, Jens David Ohlin
Targeting And The Concept Of Intent, Jens David Ohlin
Michigan Journal of International Law
International law generally prohibits military forces from intentionally targeting civilians; this is the principle of distinction. In contrast, unintended collateral damage is permissible unless the anticipated civilian deaths outweigh the expected military advantage of the strike; this is the principle of proportionality. These cardinal targeting rules of international humanitarian law are generally assumed by military lawyers to be relatively well-settled. However, recent international tribunals applying this law in a string of little-noticed decisions have completely upended this understanding. Armed with criminal law principles from their own domestic systems — often civil law jurisdictions — prosecutors, judges and even scholars have …
Footprints Of Death: Cluster Bombs As Indiscriminate Weapons Under International Humanitarian Law, Virgil Wiebe
Footprints Of Death: Cluster Bombs As Indiscriminate Weapons Under International Humanitarian Law, Virgil Wiebe
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article applies these principles of discrimination to the real, rather than idealized, use and characteristics of cluster bombs. Briefly stated, these principles call upon parties to an armed conflict to distinguish between civilians and combatants and to weigh the military advantages of a particular weapon or type of attack against the harm it will do to civilians and civilian objects. This Article also considers briefly the global problem of cluster munitions and examines fundamental components of the discrimination principle as they apply to cluster bombs. As three specific case studies, it analyzes the use of cluster bombs by breakaway …