Complicity in International Law

Complicity in International Law
Author: Miles Jackson
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2015-03-12
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0191056758

This book examines how international law prohibits state and individual complicity. Complicity is a derivative form of responsibility that links an accomplice to the wrongdoing of a principal actor. Whenever a legal system prohibits complicity, it must address certain questions as to the content and structure of the rules. To understand how international law answers these questions, this book proposes an analytical framework in which complicity rules may be assessed and defends a normative claim as to how they should be structured. Anchored by this framework and normative claim, this book shows that international criminal law regulates individual complicity in a comprehensive way, using the doctrines of instigation and aiding and abetting to inculpate complicit participants in international crimes. By contrast, international law's regulation of state complicity was historically marked by an absence of complicity rules. This is changing. In respect of state complicity in the wrongdoing of another state, international law now imposes both specific and general complicity obligations, the latter prohibiting states from aiding or assisting another state in the commission of any internationally wrongful act. In respect of the ways that states participate in harms caused by non-state actors, the traditional normative structure of international law, which imposed obligations only on states, foreclosed the possibility of prohibiting the state's participation as a form of complicity. As that traditional normative structure has evolved, so the possibility of holding states responsible for complicity in the wrongdoing of non-state actors has emerged. More and more, both the wrongs that international actors commit, and the wrongs they help or encourage others to commit, matter.

Military Assistance on Request and the Use of Force

Military Assistance on Request and the Use of Force
Author: Erika De Wet
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2020-03-26
Genre: Law
ISBN: 019108722X

In countries such as Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, and Yemen, internationally recognized governments embroiled in protracted armed conflicts, and with very little control over their territory, have requested direct military assistance from other states. These requests are often accepted by the other states, despite the circumvention of the United Nations Security Council and extensive violation of international humanitarian law and human rights. In this book, Erika De Wet examines the authority entitled to extend a request for (or consent to) direct military assistance, as well as the type of situations during which such assistance may be requested, notably whether it may be requested during a civil war. Ultimately, De Wet addresses the question of if and to what extent the proliferation of military assistance on the request of a recognized government is changing the rules in international law applying to the use of force.

Neutrality in Contemporary International Law

Neutrality in Contemporary International Law
Author: James Upcher
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2020-04-30
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0191060283

The law of neutrality - the corpus of legal rules regulating the relationship between belligerents and States taking no part in hostilities - assumed its modern form in a world in which the waging of war was unconstrained. The neutral State enjoyed territorial inviolability to the extent that it adhered to the obligations attaching to its neutral status and thus the law of neutrality provided spatial parameters for the conduct of hostilities. Yet the basis on which the law of neutrality developed - the extra-legal character of war - no longer exists. Does the law of neutrality continue to survive in the modern era? If so, how has it been modified by the profound changes in the law on the use of force and the law of armed conflict? This book argues that neutrality endures as a key concept of the law of armed conflict. The interaction between belligerent and nonbelligerent States continues to require legal regulation, as demonstrated by a number of recent conflicts, including the Iraq War of 2003 and the Mavi Marmara incident of 2010. By detailing the rights and duties of neutral states and demonstrating how the rules of neutrality continue to apply in modern day conflicts, this restatement of law of neutrality will be a useful guide to legal academics working on the law of armed conflict, the law on the use of force, and the history of international law, as well as for government and military lawyers seeking comprehensive guidance in this difficult area of the law.