Learning outcomes:
This course has been designed to enable you to:
- Chart the development of law of armed conflict since 1850 and demonstrate the impact that this has had on conduct of hostilities;
- Assess the limits and the successes of the attempt since 1945 to limit States’ recourse to force to solve international disputes;
- Consider the use of force in future, especially outside of the authority of the UN Security Council, in order to defend human rights.
Course sessions:
1. The International Legal Order
1.1 Westphalia to San Francisco
1.2 United Nations
These two lectures provide the international legal basis for the rest of the course. In the first one, we will explore the distinction between the law governing force (jus ad bellum) and the law governing the conduct of hostilities (jus in bello). We then look at the development of the jus ad bellum from ancient times to the present, covering the major legal instruments and showing how the UN Charter was a revolutionary document in making offensive war illegal for the first time in human history.
2. Regulating Conflict
2.1 Regulating Conflict to 1899
2.2 The Long 20th Century Part 1
Having introduced the rules around the use of force in Session One, Session Two looks at the development of the jus in bello, laws which regulate how wars should be fought. Here, the focus is on the Six Principles, and by considering the law of war promulgated by Abu Bakr, the first Caliph in 7th-Century Arabia, we see that many of the principles are neither modern nor Eurocentric. These lectures then cover the creation of the Red Cross and the First Geneva Convention in the 19th Century, Hague Regulations of 1899 and 1907, before looking to the key to understanding the most well-known elements, the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 by looking at how the classification of conflict dictates what law governs that conflict.
3. Contemporary Law of Armed Conflict
3.1 The Long 20th Century Part 2
3.2 Law and Disarmament
These two lectures cut to the heart of how the modern Geneva Conventions work in practice. Building on the classification of conflict lecture, we introduce the distinction between combatants and non-combatants for the first time, and look at the Direct Participation rule. Once we've worked out who is covered by the protections and permissions of the conventions, we then consider the substantive Geneva Convention law in lecture 3.1 before looking at arms control in lecture 3.2.
4. Contemporary Issues governing the Use of Force: Aggression and the Responsibility to Protect
4.1 Aggression
4.2 Responsibility to Protect
The previous two sessions have been about controlling how wars are fought, these two lectures look at two of the most challenging issues in jus ad bellum today. In lecture 4.1 we examine the notion of aggression, and how attempts to introduce criminal liability for aggression have been tried with limited success since the post-Second World War tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo convicted the Germany and Japanese wartime leaders of aggression. Lecture 4.2 looks at the problem when the UN Charter comes into conflict with itself: the lacuna that exists between protecting human rights and the guarantee of non-intervention in the affairs of a sovereign state – what happens when a state abuses its own citizens? Here, the post-Kosovo development of the law, known as Responsibility to Protect, or R2P, is examined and critiqued.
5. Enforcement and the Future
5.1 Enforcement
5.2 The world to and beyond 2030
In the final two lectures, we will look at how the international community enforces the rules, looking at the International Tribunals and internationalised courts which originated in the 1990s to prosecute crimes committed in Former Yugoslavia, the Rwandan Genocide, Sierra Leone and the historic crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the 1970s. Having looked at these courts and tribunals, we will consider the International Criminal Court (ICC) which had built on these foundations to begin to end impunity for some offenders in some conflicts. In lecture 10, we will conclude the course by considering whether the international community is closer to stopping aggression, the abuse of human rights and prosecuting those responsible than we were in 1990. What will the world look like in 2030?
Non-credit bearing
Please note that our Virtual Summer Festival of Learning courses are non-credit bearing.
Certificate of Participation
A certificate of participation will be sent to you electronically within a week of your Summer Festival course(s) finishing.
