Making and Shaping the Law of Armed Conflict (The Lieber Studies Series)

How laws are created, shaped, and applied is a significant but often overlooked component of studies on armed conflict. Almost every contentious legal question involves aspects of law-making and shaping, be it the determination of a rule's scope of application, whether and how to regulate a “new” situation, or determining which sources and materials to take into account. As such, all who operate in this space - whether academic, practitioner, policy-maker, or legal advisor - must appreciate and understand the forces, factors, and actors which converge to make and shape the ever-developing law of armed conflict. This volume brings together several key contributors to explore this making and shaping in depth. A variety of aspects of law-making and shaping are analyzed, from the methodology behind identifying principles and rules of law, to what weight should be given to the views of particular actors, to the various forums where the law is made and shaped. It examines foundational materials of the law of armed conflict including the 1949 Geneva Conventions and considers the influence of a wide scope of actors, ranging from States, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and international courts and tribunals through to expert groups, commissions of inquiry, and non-state armed groups. This volume also asks us to broaden our gaze beyond spaces where the law is traditionally created to uncover different types of making and unmaking Cover Series Lieber Institute for Law and Warfare Copyright CONTENTS Table of Cases Table of Treaties Contributors PART ONEIntroduction 1. Making and Shaping the Law of Armed Conflict: An Overview PART TWO Foundational Materials 2. Where Vienna and Geneva Meet: Treaty Interpretation and the Geneva Conventions 3. Customary International Law: A Transformative Force in the Landscape of IHL 4. Principles of International Humanitarian Law: A New Framework 5. Soft Law: What Is It Good For? PART THREE Actors and Influences 6. Expert Manuals: An Insider’s Account 7. The Development of International Humanitarian Law by the International Committee of the Red Cross 8. Applying the Law of Armed Conflict in Domestic Courts: The Fusion of Domestic and International Law and the Question of IHL Expertise 9. The Development of the Law of Armed Conflict by International Criminal Tribunals 10. The Role of Human Rights Mechanisms in Shaping International Humanitarian Law 11. Applying and Interpreting the Law of Armed Conflict: Contributions by the UN Commissions on the Syrian Arab Republic and the Republic of South Sudan 12. Non-​State Armed Groups, Law-​Making, and the Shaping of International Law in Armed Conflict PART FOUR Spaces 13. The Role of Regionalism in the Making and Shaping of the Law of Armed Conflict 14. Between War and the Text: The Pedagogical Life of International Humanitarian Law PART FIVEUnmaking 15. A Prologue to Law of War Unmaking Index