International Law, Justice, and the Politics of Armed Conflict

This course examines the application of international law to situations of armed conflict. The first part of the course provides a theoretical and historical background regarding international law governing the use of force, looking first at debates over the role and effectiveness of international law in international relations, turning to questions about how international law seeks to regulate the use of force in the international system and the extent to which actors comply with their obligations under international law. The second part of the course focuses on international humanitarian law, examining different forms of humanitarian law violations, considering how international humanitarian law affects the behavior of governments and non-state actors during conflict, and discussing why governments and non-state actors often fail to abide by international humanitarian law. In this section, we will also pay particular attention to specific cases of armed conflict – both interstate conflicts such as the war between Russia and Ukraine and civil conflicts such as Libya, Rwanda, and Syria. The last section of the course considers questions about the enforcement of international humanitarian law and attempts to secure justice for violations of international law, including discussions of ad-hoc international criminal tribunals, the International Criminal Court, and efforts to hold individuals accountable for atrocity crimes in domestic courts.