"This timely volume examines how law can respond to contemporary threats and shape a just, durable post-conflict order. Its particular strength lies in the attention it gives to law's practical role in strengthening institutions of peace. Addressing the challenges of conflict's aftermath, it yields valuable insights for scholars and practitioners alike, while making a broader case for law?not war?as the foundation of international relations."
- Dr. Olufemi Elias
Member of the United Nations International Law Commission and the Institut de droit international; Judge ad hoc, International Court of Justice
Law, Ethics, and Armed Conflict: An International Law Reader arrives at a moment when more than one hundred armed conflicts are under way across the globe. In many theaters of war, civilians are increasingly being deliberately targeted. This volume brings together leading voices in international law?practitioners, scholars, military officers, and humanitarian professionals who share a common commitment to the protection of civilians in armed conflict.
Across eleven chapters, the contributors confront the most pressing legal and ethical questions of contemporary warfare. They examine states' ongoing duty to prevent genocide in conflict and post-conflict situations, the procedures for trials in absentia, and the forcible transfer of children during armed conflict. They probe accountability for the crime of aggression, the emerging legal framework for gray-zone and hybrid warfare, and the influence of social media on wartime diplomacy. They weigh the interplay between customary international law and U.S. constitutional law, the proportionality rule at the heart of the law of targeting, and the strengthening of international humanitarian law through universal jurisdiction. The volume closes with a meditation on human dignity as the guiding principle of international humanitarian and operational law.
The contributors do not speak with a single voice, nor do they claim to resolve every challenge modern warfare presents. Yet they share a conviction that the international humanitarian legal framework can mitigate human suffering; what has too often eroded is the will to apply it. This volume is an invitation to understand that framework more deeply and to defend it more resolutely.
Frank G. Lumpkin IV is an attorney with Hall Booth Smith, PC, in Columbus, Georgia, where he focuses on complex trial and appellate litigation. A Judge Advocate in the United States Army Reserve, he served as National Security Law Attorney for Operation Spartan Shield, advising senior commanders on international law in theaters across the Middle East.
