BOOK: Enno MENSCHING, Luftkrieg und Recht. Zur historischen Rolle des Humanitären Völkerrechts in der Einhegung der Luftkriegsführung [Studien zur Geschichte des Völkerrechts; 41] (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 2022), ISBN 9783748928904

 

(image source: Nomos)

Abstract:

This book is the first comprehensive historical reconstruction of the law of air warfare. The historical analysis of norms and discourse reveals the subordinate role that international humanitarian law has played in the containment of air warfare. In a historical-chronological manner, Enno Mensching traces the theoretical development and practical observance of the legal norms relevant to air warfare to the beginnings of aviation. Special attention is paid to the critical reappraisal of the discourse on international law and the identification of the discursive legitimation strategies that are reproduced to this day to enforce military interests at the expense of humanitarian protection.

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BOOK: Michaël RIEPL, Russian Contributions to International Humanitarian Law: A contrastive analysis of Russia’s historical role and its current practice [ Kölner Schriften zum Friedenssicherungsrecht - Cologne Studies on International Peace and Security Law - Études colonaises sur le droit de la paix et de la sécurité internationale; 16] (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2022), ISBN 9783748913214 (OPEN ACCESS)

 

(image source: Nomos)

Abstract:

Has Russia turned from “Paul to Saul” with regards to international humanitarian law (IHL)? This book aims to answer this question by contrasting the past and the present. Firstly, it offers a comprehensive account of the remarkable Russian contributions to IHL since 1850. Secondly, it analyses Russia’s current approach to IHL, drawing on a wide range of legislation, case law, diplomatic records, and military practice. Finally, the author contrasts the past and the present – not without embedding his findings in the changed context of our time. The book is aimed at international law experts as well as people interested in legal history. Its author is an IHL researcher and practitioner with extensive experience in the post-soviet world.

(source: Nomos) 

BOOK: Boyd VAN DIJK, Preparing for War: the Making of the 1949 Conventions [The History and Theory of International Law, eds. Nehal BHUTA, Anthony PAGDEN & Benjamin STRAUMANN] (Oxford: OUP, 20 JAN 2022), 340 p. ISBN 9780198868071, 80 GBP

 

(image source: OUP)

Abstract:

The 1949 Geneva Conventions are the most important rules for armed conflict ever formulated. To this day they continue to shape contemporary debates about regulating warfare, but their history is often misunderstood. For most observers, the drafters behind these treaties were primarily motivated by liberal humanitarian principles and the shock of the atrocities of the Second World War. This book tells a different story, showing how the final text of the Conventions, far from being an unabashedly liberal blueprint, was the outcome of a series of political struggles among the drafters. It also concerned a great deal more than simply recognizing the shortcomings of international law revealed by the experience of war. To understand the politics and ideas of the Conventions' drafters is to see them less as passive characters responding to past events than as active protagonists trying to shape the future of warfare. In many different ways, they tried to define the contours of future battlefields by deciding who deserved protection and what counted as a legitimate target. Outlawing illegal conduct in wartime did as much to outline the concept of humanized war as to establish the legality of waging war itself. Through extensive archival research and critical legal methodologies, Preparing for War establishes that although they did not seek war, the Conventions' drafters prepared for it by means of weaving a new legal safety net in the event that their worst fear should materialize, a spectre still haunting us today.

Table of contents:

 1:Introduction

2:The Twisted Road to Geneva
3:Making the Civilian Convention
4:Internationalizing Civil and Colonial Wars
5:Fighters in the Shadow
6:Indiscriminate Warfare: Bombing, Nuclear Weapons, and Starvation
7:Preparing for the Worst
8:Conclusion

On the author:

Boyd van Dijk, McKenzie Fellow, Melbourne Law School, Australia Boyd van Dijk is a McKenzie Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He taught previously at the London School of Economics, King's College London, Queen Mary, and the University of Amsterdam.

(source: OUP) 

BOOK: James CROSSLAND, War, Law and Humanity : The Campaign to Control Warfare, 1853-1914 (London: Bloomsbury, 2018). ISBN 9781350041219, £59.50

(Source: Bloomsbury)

Bloomsbury is publishing a new book on the attempts to control warfare in the half-century before the outbreak of World War I.

ABOUT THE BOOK

War, Law and Humanity tells the story of the transatlantic campaign to either mitigate the destructive forces of the battlefield, or prevent wars from being waged altogether, in the decades prior to the disastrous summer of 1914. Starting with the Crimean War of the 1850s, James Crossland traces this campaign to control warfare from the scandalous barracks of Scutari to the shambolic hospitals of the American Civil War, from the bloody sieges of Paris and Erzurum to the combative conference halls of Geneva and The Hague, uncovering the intertwined histories of a generation of humanitarians, surgeons, pacifists and utopians who were shocked into action by the barbarism and depravities of war. By examining the fascinating personal accounts of these figures, Crossland illuminates the complex motivations and influential actions of those committed to the campaign to control war, demonstrating how their labours built the foundation for the ideas – enshrined in our own times as international norms – that soldiers need caring for, weapons need restricting and wars need rules.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Crossland is Senior Lecturer in International History at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. He is the author of Britain and the International Committee of the Red Cross, 1939-1945 (2014), the first study of Britain's humanitarian policy during the Second World War. He has published widely on the history of wartime humanitarianism, international law and the Red Cross movement.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Dramatis Personae
Timeline
Introduction – A Time for Angels
1. The Crimean Crucible
2. Citizen-Humanitarians
3. The Union Way
4. Visions from Geneva
5. How Best to Serve the Suffering?
6. When Angels Go to War
7. Humanity and Necessity
8. The Sound of Drums
9. Enter the Peace-Seekers
10. Regulations for Apocalypse
Conclusion – 1914: The Campaign Ends?
Bibliography
Index

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