International Law

How has war changed in the post-modern era?

• Force without war

  • you can have an ongoing conflict without having a formal declaration of war

How was war changed in the post-modern area?

• Diminishing role of the state

  • civil wars, intrastate, can become transnational

How was war changed in the post-modern era?

• Change of nature of technology

  • reshaped the way we see global conflict

What is UN peacekeeping? How is it justifiable under the UN charter?

• The deployment of international forces to help maintain peace and security in conflict areas. Participating actors in a given conflict allow the UN to come in and be peacekeepers (

  • cannot use force, take sides, and can only use weapons in self-defense

    • Not explicitly in charter, but is an implied way for the UN to do something during the times of deadlock with the Security Council.

What is jus ad bellum? What are the related principles articulated in the UN charter?

Right to war

• Self Defense

  • Proper Authority

  • Last Resort

Two basic areas of the laws of jus in bello

• Treatment of individual people

  • combatants / non-combatants / civilians / neutral personnel

  • prisoners of war

  • guerrilla fighters / terrorists

Two basic areas of the laws of jus in bello

• weapons / tactics

  • minimizing potential harm in order to reach objective

  • proportionality

  • necessity

Why are drones considered “a proportional weapon par excellence” under the principles of jus in bello?

• their precise targeting and extended surveillance allow operators to:

  • better distinguish between combatants and civilians.

  • Minimize collateral damage

  • wait for the ideal moment to strike

    • theoretically reducing civilian casualties

Explain the following quote by Hall on drones: “Put starkly, what happens between drones / operators and combatants / civilians is arguably not even war, let alone just war. it is execution, or extermination.”

• Drone warfare is so one-sided and risk free for the drone operator that it doesn’t look like traditional war at all. In normal war, both sides face danger with drones, the operator is safe, far away and can kill targets without being seen or threatened.

  • Not really “war”: there’s no real battle or mutual risk

  • Not “just war”: not a morally fair or ethical war

  • Is an execution (killing someone without a fair fight) / extermination (wiping people out from a distance).

Treatment of aliens under IL

you are subject to the laws of the state you are a guest in

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

• Derives from universal declaration of human rights (adopted by general assembly in 1948)

  • Reflection of the western fundamental ideas of what human rights should look like

International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights

• Derives from universal declaration of human rights (adopted by general assembly in 1948)

  • Reflects what we see in western Europe

  • Reflects the rights of interested parties in the 3rd world.

How are human rights norms enforced?

• Not well

  • There are monitoring bodies though

How and why did the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty reconceptualize the idea of sovereignty?

• Sovereignty meant non-interference and absolute state authority then changes to require states to protect their people from genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

  • The old model let atrocities like Rwanda and Bosnia happen without intervention.

Why were the IMF and World Bank created in 1945?

• To assist developing countries

  • Making sure international currency was accessible to anyone and everyone

• Central bank for the world; multilateral aid, loans, and grants

  • Rebuilding Europe

  • Helping colonies become independent

Why could the WTO’s dispute resolution process be considered a successful example of IL?

• Has real enforcement power

  • treats big and small states equally

How do developing states criticize the international economic regime?

• Rules are written by wealthy countries

• Unequal voting power

• Dependency and neocolonialism

Why is it so difficult to find Jamaican-grown bananas in US grocery stores?

• Globalization

Why does Rochester argue that more international environmental law is not what is needed?

• States need to follow what they have already agreed to before adding more

What is the FCCC? Why did it not obligate states to take immediate action to limit carbon emissions?

• Framework Convention on Climate Change

  • Common goal of reducing anthropogenic climate change (global warming / carbon emissions)

• They did not have a way to actually limit carbon emissions

  • Recognized there was a problem but did not know how to execute solution.

Why did Bodansky call the Paris Agreement’s Nationally Determined Contribution’s a “Goldilocks Solution”?

• Let nation-states determine a reasonable amount of carbon emissions they would agree to.

ICJ’s advisory opinion on climate change

• Fiji appealed to ICJ on whether states like Fiji could hold the devout world financially responsible for the effects of climate change

  • ICJ said yes

Failures and Successes of CoP30

• No meaningful steps going forward

  • Still continue to find evidence of climate change throughout the world

Why does Rochester argue that the state system is still important?

• Nation-states still reflect the interests of that state

Why is IL more effective in low-politics issue areas?

• Allows for globalization to effectively function.