030317 KU Laws of Armed Conflict (2021W)

In this course you will understand why the law of war exists, how it came about and why it is so often honoured more in breach than in practice. This course offers a comprehensive overview of the rules regulating organised violence, usually involving states.

Contrary to popular understanding, military thinkers from Clausewitz onwards recognised that war is never absolute but always subject to “circumscribing and moderating forces.” In this course you will understand what these forces are, how they operate, what conduct they have endorsed or shunned and, perhaps most importantly, why.

Along the way, you will discover that for all its rigour and scope, this law is at once complete, precise, doctrinal – but incompletely observed. As Lauterpacht memorably put it: “If international law is, in some ways, at the vanishing point of law, the law of war is, perhaps even more conspicuously, at the vanishing point of international law.”

We will focus on the practical use and functional necessity of the law of armed conflict for the conduct of international relations and the maintenance of discipline and cohesion in national militaries, at times in contrast to the more idealistic aspirations of international humanitarian law. Heavy use of case studies will be made. You will learn that much of the apparent paradox of regulating killing and destruction fades away once the organisational imperatives of military life are taken into account.