This volume collects articles on the law of armed conflict and the use of force from the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, to facilitate easy access to content from the leading reference work in international law.
The aim of this new collection of essays is to engage in analysis beyond the familiar victor’s justice critiques. The editors have drawn on authors from across the world — including Australia, Japan, China, France, Korea, New Zealand and the United Kingdom — with expertise in the fields of international humanitarian law, international criminal law, Japanese studies, modern Japanese history, and the use of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. The diverse backgrounds of the individual authors allow the editors to present essays which provide detailed and original analyses of the Tokyo Trial from legal, philosophical and historical perspectives. Several of the essays in the collection are based on the authors’ extensive archival research in Japan, Australia, the United States and New Zealand, providing rich insights into Japanese societal attitudes towards the Trial, biological experimentation by the Japanese Army in China, as well as the trial of Korean prison guards and prosecutions for rape and sexual assault in the post-war period. Some of the essays deal with particular participants in the Trial, examining the role of individual judges, and the selection of defendants and the decision not to prosecute the Emperor. Other essays analyse the Trial from a legal perspective, and address its impact on concepts such as command responsibility, conspiracy and war crimes. The majority of the essays seek to identify and address some of the ‘forgotten crimes’ in the Tokyo Trial. These include crimes committed in China and Korea (particularly the activities of the infamous Unit 731), crimes committed against comfort women, and crimes associated with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the conventional firebombing of other Japanese cities and the illicit drug trade in China. Finally, the collection includes a number of essays which consider the importance of studying the Tokyo Trial and its contemporary relevance. These issues include an examination of the way in which academics have ‘written’ the Trial over the last 60 years, and an analysis of some of the lessons that can be drawn for international trials in the future.
Beyond Human Rights, previously published in German and now available in English, is a historical and doctrinal study about the legal status of individuals in international law.
This impressive and unique collection of essays covers important aspects of the legal regime of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The volume begins with an analysis of the historical development of the ICC, the progressive development of international humanitarian and international criminal law by the ad hoc Tribunals and the work of mixed national/international jurisdictions. The legal and institutional basis of the ICC is then dealt with in detail, including the organs of the ICC, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of aggression, modes of liability before the ICC and defences before the ICC. Part III focuses on the court at work, including its procedural rules, criminal proceedings at the ICC, penalties and appeal and revision procedures. Part IV deals with the relationship of the ICC with states and international organizations. The contributors are established scholars in the field of international criminal and humanitarian law, many of whom are practitioners in the various tribunals.
Mechanisms for individuals to bring claims under international law have become increasingly common in recent decades, particularly in human rights and investment law. Nonetheless, when the International Law Commission codified the law of State responsibility, it largely ignored the bringing of international claims by individuals, and the relationship between such claims and those brought on the interstate level. Overlapping Individual and Interstate Claims in International Law is the first dedicated monograph examining this relationship - one that is of mounting importance on both a practical and theoretical level. This work provides a comprehensive survey of the potential for overlapping individual and interstate claims to arise. It underlines issues of fairness, consistency, and interference with autonomy that can result when multiple claimants vie to have their claims determined before different forums. The author analyses in detail how treaty provisions and various rules and principles of international law can be expected to regulate such overlapping claims, considering, among others, the local remedies rule, the rule precluding double recovery, res judicata, waiver, and certain circumstances precluding wrongfulness. The book clarifies the nature of international claims, including in the theoretically muddled field of diplomatic protection, and highlights undertheorized foundations of topical debates concerning the use of countermeasures and self-defence outside of the interstate arena. It concludes with a human rights-oriented proposal for resolving the complex policy issues to which these overlapping claims give rise.
This monograph analyses the historical evolution of the laws of occupation as a special branch of international humanitarian law (IHL), focusing on the extent to which this body of law has been transformed by its interaction with the development of international human rights law. It argues that a large part of the laws of occupation has proved to be malleable while being able to accommodate changing demands of civilians and any other persons affected by occupation in modern context. Its examinations have drawn much on archival research into the drafting documents of the instruments of IHL, including the aborted Brussels Declaration 1874, the 1899/1907 Hague Regulations, the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the 1977 Additional Protocol I. After assessing the complementary relationship between international human rights law and the laws of occupation, the book examines how to provide a coherent explanation for an emerging framework on the rights of individual persons affected by occupation. It engages in a theoretical appraisal of the role of customary IHL and the Martens clause in building up such a normative framework.
This book centres on the war that raged between Eritrea and Ethiopia from 1998 to 2000, a war that caused great loss of life and tremendous devastation. It analyses the war in great detail from an international legal perspective: the nature and the state of the boundary conflict preceding the actual armed conflict, the military actions themselves, the role of the UN peace-keeping mission, the responsibility for the multitude of explosive remnants of the war left behind. Ample attention is paid to the decisions of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission and the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission. This study is not limited to the war and the period immediately following it, it also examines its more extended aftermath prolonging the analysis as far as the more recent improvement in the relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia, away from a situation of ‘no war, no peace’ that prevailed after the armed conflict ended. The analysis of the war and its aftermath is not only in terms of international legal issues, it has been placed in a wider than strictly legal perspective. The book is a valuable work for academics and practitioners in international law, human rights and humanitarian law in particular, for political scientists, diplomats, civil servants, historians, and all those others seriously interested in the Horn of Africa. Andrea de Guttry is Full Professor of Public International Law at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa, Italy. Harry H.G. Post is Adjunct Professor in the Faculté Libre de Droit of the Université Catholique de Lille in Lille, France. Gabriella Venturini is Professor Emerita in the Dipartimento di Studi internazionali, giuridici e storico-politici of the Università degli Studi di Milano in Milan, Italy.
This book focuses on the aftermath of World War II in Asia as described in a sobering and insightful history of two types of redress: compensation for material war damage and restitution of looted property. Japanese Army units and citizens stole goods while shelling and bombardment by all sides destroyed factories, offices and residential neighbourhoods. How were these cases of material damage and loss to be rectified, and who was to rectify them? What financial means and legal precedents were there to fall back on at a time of decolonization, independence struggle, and shifting alliances on the brink of the Cold War? The politics of redress makes an important contribution to the study of law and society in Southeast Asia. It lays bare the complex web of interconnections between politics, law and economy from a comparative historical perspective. The translation of this book was funded by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research).