The Implementation and Enforcement of International Humanitarian Law The Library of Essays in International Humanitarian Law Series

The essays selected for this volume explore the entire range of issues related to the question of how to implement and enforce international humanitarian law. Measures of self-help that used to play a key role in past international armed conflicts, especially reprisals, have increasingly been outlawed, and thus the enforcement of international humanitarian law has now to be achieved by other means, including criminal proceedings against those who have seriously (or gravely) committed war crimes. Accordingly, the concept of grave breaches, the universality principle and international criminal law are dealt with extensively in this collection. Finally, the volume includes an examination of the practice of 'lawfare' (an abuse of international humanitarian law for military or political purposes) which has proven increasingly effective in contemporary armed conflict.

Contents: Introduction, Wolff Heintschel von Heinegg; War reprisals in the war crimes trials and in the Geneva Conventions of 1949, A.R. Albrecht; Belligerent reprisals revisited, F. Kalshoven; The implementation and enforcement of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the additional Protocols of 1978, G.I.A.D. Draper; The role of legal advisers in the armed forces, Leslie C. Green; The man in the field and the maxim of ignorantia iuris non excusat, L.C. Green; Private pecuniary claims arising out of war, Edwin M. Borchard; State responsibility for warlike acts of the armed forces: from Article 3 of Hague Convention IV of 1907 to Article 91 of Additional Protocol I of 1977 and beyond, Frits Kalshoven; The history of the grave breaches regime, Yves Sandoz; The universality principle and war crimes, Yoram Dinstein; The law of nations and the punishment of war crimes, H. Lauterpacht; The municipal and international law basis of jurisdiction over war crimes, Richard R. Baxter; Superior orders and the reasonable man, L.C. Green; Command responsibility for war crimes, William H. Parks; Accountability for international crimes: from conjecture to reality, Jelena Pejic; Law and military interventions: preserving humanitarian values in 21st conflicts, Charles J. Dunlap Jr; Name index.

Michael N. Schmitt, Professor, United States Naval War College and Wolff Heintschel von Heinegg, Professor, European University Viadrina Frankfurt, Germany.