scholarly journals Accountability Gap, Autonomous Weapon Systems and Modes of Responsibility in International Law

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thompson Chengeta
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Weapon Systems ◽  
Accountability Gap

Weapons and the Law of Armed Conflict

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boothby William H
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Novel Technologies ◽  
Weapon Systems ◽  
Arms Trade ◽  
Logical Sequence ◽  
The Law

This book brings the legal rules governing the use of weapons in armed conflict together into a single volume and interprets and applies those principles and rules to particular weapons technologies. It is the essential reference book for anyone dealing or concerned with the international law applying to weaponry. After relating the historical evolution of weapons law, identifying its sources and discussing the important customary principles that are the foundation of the subject, the book explains to the reader in a logical sequence of chapters how treaty and customary rules apply to particular categories of weapon or to relevant technologies, both traditional and novel. Having explained to the reader how the existing law applies across the full range of weapons technologies, the book discusses how this dynamic field of international law may be expected to develop in the years ahead. This new edition tackles challenging weapons law issues such as the new treaty law on expanding bullets and on the arms trade, novel technologies in the fields of chemistry and biology, the topical controversies associated with autonomous and automated weapon systems, and how law applies to weapons in outer space and to cyber weapons. The law applicable in non-international armed conflicts is summarized; compliance and weapon reviews are carefully explained; and recent international and national military manuals, and other developments in the wider literature, are thoroughly reflected throughout the text.

Show Us the Films: Transparency, National Security and Disclosure of Information Collected by Advanced Weapon Systems under International Law

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-491
Author(s):  
Eliav Lieblich
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
International Law ◽  
Wide Spectrum ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Modern Technology ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Weapon Systems ◽  
High Quality Information

The advent of modern technology such as drones provides states with unique capabilities to acquire, with ease, high-quality information regarding acts performed by armed forces and agencies, such as (but not only) targeted killings. In some cases, this information can shed light on the facts of the case, when alleged violations of international humanitarian law or international human rights law have occurred and thus investigation is called for. However, although calls for disclosure are increasing, states are reluctant to disclose information relating to such activities. This article discusses potential sources for obligations of disclosure, whether to civil society or to certain international bodies such as the International Criminal Court. In essence, the article posits that disclosure obligations can derive from the principle of transparency, as it applies, inter alia, to investigations, augmented by an emerging positive right to receive information. These obligations must be balanced, in turn, with considerations of national security. The article suggests that this balance, across a wide spectrum of international contexts, should be conducted in light of standards of necessity, proportionality and specificity. Accordingly, blanket non-disclosure may constitute a violation of international law or result in factual inferences to the detriment of states or individuals.

scholarly journals The Idea of Global Public Law: Response To Unbound Symposium Essays

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 80-83
Author(s):  
Devika Hovell
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
New World ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
World Order ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Public Law ◽  
New World Order ◽  
Accountability Gap

Law abhors a vacuum. Lawyers (including international lawyers) have constructed their profession around the fiction that such a thing is impossible. Where gaps emerge in a legal framework, lawyers face the task of filling it, compromised by the additional hurdle of having to pretend there was no gap in the first place. The challenge has intensified with the ever-widening and deepening accountability gap that has accompanied the growth of global governance. In the period between H.G. Wells’ writing of The New World Order and the drafting of Security Council resolutions 827, 1267, 1373, and 1540, global governance has evolved from an idea of utopian/dystopian fiction to reality. In a recent article in the American Journal of International Law on “Due Process in the United Nations,” I argue that as legal academics we are justified in taking a more architectural role in proposing a legal framework to fill the good-governance-size hole in this emerging tier of governance. Essayists in the AJIL Unbound Symposium convened in response to my article raised interesting (and fairly fundamental) challenges to the methodology proposed. The hosts of the symposium kindly offered me the chance to respond—I took them up. There may be gaps in international law, but never silences.

scholarly journals The Right to Perform Rescue at Sea: Jurisprudence and Drowning

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 598-619
Author(s):  
Itamar Mann
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Law Of The Sea ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Refugee Law ◽  
Civil And Political Rights ◽  
The Right ◽  
Accountability Gap

AbstractFraming largescale migrant drownings as violations of international law has so far not been a straightforward task. The failures of doing so, both in scholarship and in activism, have often revealed important limitations of international law, and a form of rightlessness that is hard-wired in it. Through an assessment of arguments about drowning, framed in the vocabularies of the right to life, refugee law, the law of the sea, and international criminal law, difficulties surrounding the notion of jurisdiction persist: The maritime space has often functioned as a kind of “legal black hole.” Considering such difficulties, this Article suggests that shifting the focus from migrant rights to the civil and political rights of volunteers coming to the rescue, may help in closing the accountability gap. It thus seeks to articulate and conceptualize a form of maritime civil disobedience among rescue volunteers, which may provide the link for eliminating migrant rightlessness at sea.

scholarly journals Debating Autonomous Weapon Systems, their Ethics, and their Regulation under International Law

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Anderson ◽  
Matthew C. Waxman
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Target Selection ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
International Treaty ◽  
International Debate ◽  
Weapon Systems ◽  
Law And Ethics ◽  
Law Of Armed Conflict ◽  
The Law

An international public debate over the law and ethics of autonomous weapon systems (AWS) has been underway since 2012, with those urging legal regulation of AWS under existing principles and requirements of the international law of armed conflict in argument with opponents who favour, instead, a preemptive international treaty ban on all such weapons. This chapter provides an introduction to this international debate, offering the main arguments on each side. These include disputes over defining an AWS, the morality and law of automated targeting and target selection by machine, and the interaction of humans and machines in the context of lethal weapons of war. Although the chapter concludes that a categorical ban on AWS is unjustified morally and legally—favouring the law of armed conflict’s existing case-by-case legal evaluation—it offers an exposition of arguments on each side of the AWS issue.

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