Search: battlefield robots
02 Feb Weekend Roundup: January 26 – February 1, 2013
This week on Opinio Juris, Julian kicked off on a lighter note with a Chinese cartoon on the maritime dispute between China and the Philippines. IHL and ICL lawyers were well catered for throughout the week, starting with a guest post by Michael W. Lewis, who discussed two more issues raised at the Boundaries of the Battlefield symposium: “elongated imminence” in response to an armed attack and the lack of operational experience of those writing on international humanitarian law. Kevin later took issue with the suggestion that Israel’s Six Day...03 Oct Is There a Limit to the Crimes Subject to the Jurisdiction of the Military Commission?
...war. Congress does not seem to have perceived any limit to the range of non-law of war offenses that may be subjected to trial by military commission. Considering the military commissions are creatures of the laws and customs of war, or as some commentators have labeled them, “war courts”, I have a hard time reconciling this view of jurisdiction. I do not dispute that some offenses may be subjected to trial by military commission by statute, but I think this is a limited category of customarily accepted “battlefield” crimes that...
18 Jul Symposium on PMSCs: Playing Regulatory Catch-up – PM(S)Cs and the New Draft Instrument
...to ease the pressure on the monopoly on the use of force and, subsequently, sovereignty. This is, unfortunately, highly unlikely as previously discussed and stated by key host states of PMCs. Sisyphean Task All in all, PMSCs and their patrons have the distinct advantage of being already established. At present, PMSCs seem to be a permanent fixture, making regaining sole state authority on all outsourced services unrealistic. Regulators have to fight against the status quo of quasi-unlimited freedom in the use of PMCs in and around the battlefield, a steep...02 Dec Upcoming Events: December 2, 2012
Upcoming Events The next session of the Joint International Humanitarian Law Forum takes place on December 5, 2012 at the IDC Radzyner School of Law. Dr. Ben Clarke will discuss his new article “Beyond the Call of Duty: Integration of International Humanitarian Law in Video Games and Battlefield Training Simulators”. More information can be found here. Calls for Papers The International Community Law Review has issued a call for papers for a special issue of its 2013 volume, to be edited by Professor Duncan French (University of Lincoln) and Dr....14 Jul Joining Opinio Juris
...robot soldiers and the ethical and legal questions posed by the (slowly) developing technology of battlefield robotics! It probably won’t take too long for people to notice that I am (roughly speaking) a conservative, in American terms and at least within academia, on many of these issues – a democratic sovereigntist is more accurate. My skepticism about significant chunks of the international law program of liberal international global governance is more than just realist skepticism about ideals outstripping real world possibilities; I am interesting in defending and articulating a normative...
30 Apr Soldier Self-Defense Symposium: Individual Self-Defense in Armed Conflict – a US Perspective
...of self-defense would likely succeed in scenario two, but fail in scenario three. While this is a technical argument that would have little significance in an actual criminal case, it is important to note because it illustrates why individual self-defense on the battlefield is a limited authority. It will generally apply in only two situations – against someone trying to harm a person for motives not connected to the ongoing armed conflict or in non-international armed conflicts against members of organized armed groups or civilians taking a direct part in...
18 Dec The War on Drugs is not a War (Part II): Classification Challenges
[Dr Chiara Redaelli is a research fellow at the University of Geneva, IHL and ICL expert with the International Development Law Organization Ukraine Office and co-editor in chief of the on the Use of Force and International Law] From Drug Boats to Battlefields? The United States’ Classification of the “War on Drugs” In September 2025, the Trump administration began describing U.S. counter-narcotics operations in explicitly military terms. Lethal strikes on suspected drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific were framed as defensive actions against organized cartels posing an ongoing threat...
15 Oct Is it Cake? On Boobytrapped Pagers, IHL and Scenario-based Thinking
...soldiers in the field here, as they operate far away from civilians and under time pressure. But note the contrast with modifying several thousand pagers into explosive devices: instead of being prepared ad hoc, on the battlefield and under time pressure, the pager operation was geographically and temporally far removed from the actual fighting, with ample time to consider what objects to use, how they would be spread and the potential impact on civilians. It thus much more closely resembles mass production akin to what the Soviets supposedly did in...08 Jul Guest Post: Military Members Claiming Self-Defence During Armed Conflict–Often Misguided and Unhelpful
...application on the battlefield than is generally understood. First, self-defence does not apply when a person is responding to a lawful act (eg, I cannot claim self-defence as a legal basis of for my use of force against a police officer who is exercising a lawful arrest). Second, and as a corollary to the first point, self-defence does not arise when military members are otherwise authorised by law to use force against another person. Where a State is engaged in an international armed conflict, a combatant is entitled to the...08 Jul Guest Post: Henderson & Cavanagh on Self-Defense & The Privilege of Combatancy
...him for murder committed on the battlefield. All of this suggests that the modern classification scheme has lost the richness of these older conceptual categories. And we might have been too hasty in concluding that rebels can never enjoy the privilege of combatancy. In some situations it may be logically coherent to extend the privilege of combatancy to them during some non-international armed conflicts – and at the same time prosecute them for treason and other loyalty-based offenses if they have violated a pertinent duty or oath to their sovereign....