In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

08 Jul

[Jens David Ohlin is Professor of Law at Cornell Law School.] Ian Henderson and Bryan Cavanagh have hit the nail on the head in identifying a crucial and under-theorized question that goes right to the basic structure of the laws of war. I am in complete agreement that invocations of self-defense during armed conflict are both confused and confusing. There is already the frequent problem of conflating individual self-defense (in the criminal law sense) with collective self-defense (jus ad bellum and article 51 of the UN Charter).  In addition, one often hears talk of a soldier’s right of self-defense – a claim that is mostly redundant since soldiers hold the privilege of combatancy and have no need to invoke a separate justification for their behavior. A justification like self-defense serves to negate the wrongdoing of the act, but a privileged soldier who kills a legitimate target has committed no wrongful act that requires negating.  Consequently, the justification of self-defense is only relevant during armed conflict when the defender is unprivileged, such as a civilian who has no right to participate in armed conflict.  If the civilian is challenged by an enemy combatant who refuses to obey the principle of distinction, then the civilian is entitled to kill the soldier in self-defense. If a soldier is attacked by a civilian, the soldier can legitimately kill the civilian because he is directly participating in hostilities; no claim of self-defense is required because the privilege applies. Understanding self-defense from a civilian’s perspective is more difficult.  Consider the complicated problem of a civilian who kills an enemy soldier who is in the process of killing the civilian as collateral damage during a lawful attack against a military objective. In that scenario, does the civilian have the right of self-defense? In the criminal law we usually view the right of self-defense as only applicable against unlawful attacks, but in this case the attacking soldier’s original assault is lawful under LOAC as long as the anticipated collateral damage is not disproportionate to the value of the military objective. If the envisioned collateral damage is disproportionate, then the attack is unlawful.  So, in that case, the right of the civilian to exercise self-defense would depend entirely on the civilian making the correct assessment of not only the collateral damage, but also the anticipated collateral damage viewed -- not from his perspective – but rather from the perspective of the person attacking him!  A greater conceptual riddle I cannot fathom.  This would be a nightmare for a criminal court, international or domestic, to adjudicate. The deeper issue imbedded in Henderson and Cavanaugh’s research is the application of the privilege of combatancy to non-international armed conflicts.  The standard textbook answer is that the privilege is inapplicable to NIAC because the very concept of “combatant” is part of the legal architecture of IAC.  Under this view, a NIAC can only have government forces and rebels – never combatants per se. To my mind, this statement is often reflexively repeated in the literature without due consideration for whether it is always and universally true.  Few individuals have challenged it, though Henderson himself is one of the few to have seriously studied the issue, writing articles suggesting that government forces in NIACs are privileged belligerents and that prosecuting them domestically would violate the laws of war.  Henderson is to be commended for tackling an understudied but vital topic.
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08 Jul

[Ian Henderson is a group captain in the Royal Australian Air Force and is currently posted as the Director Military Law Centre and Deputy-Director Asia-Pacific Centre for Military Law. Bryan Cavanagh is a squadron leader in the Royal Australian Air Force and is currently posted as a legal training officer at the Military Law Centre and Asia-Pacific Centre for Military Law. This note was written in their personal capacities and does not necessarily represent the views of the Australian Government or the Australian Department of Defence.] We would like to thank the editors of Opinio Juris for allowing us this opportunity to discuss our draft book chapter on the how the concept of self-defence under criminal law operates in relation to military members during an armed conflict. We would also like to thank the ASIL Lieber Society and the judges who kindly awarded our paper a Certificate of Merit (second prize) in the 2014 Richard R. Baxter Military Prize for ‘a paper that significantly enhances the understanding and implementation of the law of war’. The Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) reflects a balance between military necessity and humanity. Potentially upsetting this balance is an apparent trend towards relying on self-defence under criminal law as a justification for the use of force by military members during armed conflicts. We argue that this trend is based on a misunderstanding of the scope self-defence when applied in light of the combatant’s privilege. As the relevant law that would apply to a claim of self-defence depends upon the jurisdiction, we limited our analysis to the Australian Commonwealth Criminal Code and the Rome Statute. We would be very interested to hear about how our analysis might apply in other jurisdictions. We have split the issues up into four discrete posts. In this post, we discuss the circumstances where self-defence does and does not apply during an armed conflict. This also entails discussing the combatant’s privilege. In our next post, we will deal with whether it is lawful under the criminal law concept of self-defence to cause incidental injury (aka, collateral damage) and whether the law relating to self-defence imposes requirements similar to the ‘precautions in attack’ under article 57 Additional Protocol I. The third post will be a comparison of how LOAC and the law of self-defence deal with a number of discrete issues like the use of prohibited weapons, obedience to lawful commands, and ‘duty’ to retreat. And in the final post we will briefly address the rules of engagement (ROE) concept of unit self-defence. You say tomato, I say tomahto Self-defence is not a unitary concept, but rather has different legal and operational meanings. It is vital to distinguish between the different meanings and ask in what context is the term ‘self-defence’ being used. Our chapter is about an individual claiming self-defence when facing potential criminal (or disciplinary) charges. It is not about a State’s right of self-defence under article 51 UN Charter (or customary international law).. Whether or not a State has a right to use force in national self-defence is a separate and distinct issue from whether an individual is not guilty of crime under the relevant self-defence provisions pertaining in a particular criminal jurisdiction.
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07 Jul

The naturalization ceremony is now a part of the July 4th ritual, right up there with picnics, parades, and fireworks. The script is faithfully recounted in newspapers across the country. Dignified surroundings (courtrooms, historic sites, ballparks) with presiding local luminaries (judges, office holders, public intellectuals), celebratory family members in tow. US flag-waving applicants from [fill-in-the-blank] number of countries. Short summaries...

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07 Jul

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa West African countries and international health organizations adopted a fresh strategy on Thursday to fight the world's deadliest Ebola epidemic, which has killed hundreds of people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Asia India summoned a senior U.S. diplomat to explain reports that the U.S. National Security Agency was...

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05 Jul

This week of Opinio Juris, Chris discussed the significance of Ukraine's, Moldova's, and Georgia's signing of Association Agreements with the European Union. Peter, meanwhile, pointed out two provisions in Canada's citizenship-stripping legislation of questionable compatibility with international and human rights law, and explained how the US Supreme Court's Recess Appointments case speaks to foreign relations law. Jessica wrapped up the news and I listed...

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02 Jul

Just a quick note for those of you who, like me, have a fondness for the Digest of U.S. Practice in International Law; the 2013 volume is now available on the State Department's website (see here).   I find the Digest to be one of the great resources on U.S. views of international law; it regularly includes letters, reports, and other documents that...

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02 Jul

Not much surprise that the Supreme Court's ruling in the recess appointments case NLRB v. Noel Canning would draw on historical practice, since there wasn't much else to draw on. Breyer's opinion in the case sets out a notable defense of practice as precedent: [I]n interpreting the [Recess Appointments] Clause, we put significant weight upon historical practice. For one thing, the...

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01 Jul

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa The two main factions in the Central African Republic's conflict have taken a tentative step towards ending violence that has killed thousands and forced more than a million people to flee their homes.  Asia India's domestically-produced Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) has blasted off from the southern spaceport of Sriharikota, carrying satellites from...

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30 Jun

Canada last week enacted a major amendment (Bill C-24) to its citizenship law. As a general matter it makes citizenship harder to get and easier to lose. Residency periods for naturalization are lengthened and physical presence requirements toughened up, English and civics tests will apply more broadly, and naturalization fees are tripled. This on top of the elimination of the...

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29 Jun

Call for papers Professor Julian Killingley and Dr Jon Yorke are calling for contributions to a new volume on "International Law and American Exceptionalism", to be published in the Ashgate Series: Controversies in American Constitutional Law. This edited collection engages with the controversies surrounding the relationship of international law and American domestic law. It deals with a variety of approaches to the...

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