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A War For Liberty: On The Law Of Conscientious Objection, Jeremy K. Kessler
A War For Liberty: On The Law Of Conscientious Objection, Jeremy K. Kessler
Faculty Scholarship
One common understanding of the Second World War is that it was a contest between liberty and tyranny. For many at the time – and for still more today – ‘liberty’ meant the rule of law: government constrained by principle, procedure, and most of all, individual rights. For those states that claimed to represent this rule-of-law tradition, total war presented enormous challenges, even outright contradictions. How would these states manage to square the governmental imperatives of military emergency with the legal protections and procedures essential to preserving the ancient ‘liberty of the subject’? This question could be and was asked …
The Invention Of A Human Right: Conscientious Objection At The United Nations, 1947-2011, Jeremy Kessler
The Invention Of A Human Right: Conscientious Objection At The United Nations, 1947-2011, Jeremy Kessler
Faculty Scholarship
The right of conscientious objection to military service is the most startling of human rights. While human rights generally seek to protect individuals from state power, the right of conscientious objection radically alters the citizen-state relationship, subordinating a state's decisions about national security to the beliefs of the individual citizen. In a world of nation-states jealous of their sovereignty, how did the human right of conscientious objection become an international legal doctrine? By answering that question, this Article both clarifies the legal pedigree of the human right of conscientious objection and sheds new light on the relationship between international human …