The Laws of War in Ancient Greece

2008 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 469-489 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriaan Lanni
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Peloponnesian War ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Equal Power

One of the earliest and the most famous statements of realism in international law comes from ancient Greece: the Melian dialogue in history of the Peloponnesian War. In 416 B.C.E., the Athenians invaded Melos, a small island in the Aegean that sought to remain neutral and avoid joining the Athenian empire. Thucydides presents an account of the negotiation between the Athenians and the Melian leaders. The Athenians offer the Melians a choice: become a subject of Athens, or resist and be annihilated. The Melians argue, among other things, that justice is on their side. The Athenians dismiss arguments from justice as irrelevant and reply with a statement that many scholars believe represents view: “We both alike know that in human reckoning the question of justice only enters where there is equal power to enforce it, and that the powerful exact what they can, and the weak grant what they must.”

Sources and the Legality and Validity of International Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Ellen O’Connell ◽  
Caleb Day
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Global Community ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
History Of

This chapter posits that international law, like all law, can be understood as a hybrid of positive and natural law. The history of natural law from Ancient Greece to today’s global community reveals that the method used for centuries to explain extra-positive features of law consists of three integral elements. The method uses reason, reflection on nature, and openness to transcendence. Certain contemporary natural law theorists, however, prefer to focus on reason and nature alone. Yet, the history of natural law thinking shows that transcendence is integral to the method. History also reveals that religion is not the only avenue to transcendence. Transcendence completes a natural law method capable of explaining persuasively why law binds in general and why certain principles are superior to positive law.

Lawless Wars of Empire? The International Law of War in the Philippines, 1898–1903

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 511-550 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Smiley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
United States Army ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
Military Officers ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Writing for his fellow military officers in early 1903, United States Army Major C.J. Crane reflected on the recent Philippine–American War. The bloody struggle to suppress an insurgency in the Philippines after the United States had annexed them from Spain in 1899 had officially concluded the previous July. The war had been accompanied by fierce racist sentiments among Americans, and in keeping with these, Crane described his foes as “the most treacherous people in the world.” But Crane's discussion drew as much on concepts of law as it did on race. The average American officer, Crane argued, had “remembered all the time that he was struggling with an enemy who was not entitled to the privileges usually granted prisoners of war,” and could be summarily executed, without benefit of “court-martial or other regular tribunal.” If anything, the Americans had been too generous. “Many [American] participants in the struggle,” he maintained, “have failed to fully understand that we were practically fighting an Asiatic nation in arms and almost every man a soldier in disguise and a violator” of the laws of war. But what did those laws mean to the United States during the conflict, and what does this indicate about the broader history of international law's relationship to empire?

“Recapturing” the “Other”: Jewish Laws of War and International Law

2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-65
Author(s):  
Betina Kuzmarov
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Direct Consequence ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
The Relationship

The story would recapture the trace of Judaism, particularly the mystical Jew, in the early literature of international law—I think most readily of Gentilis' obsession with Judaism—a Judaism that seems at once the law that revelation and redemption replace and the mysticism that law and state refuse. Paradoxically enough, we find here our own complex relationship between law and religion exactly mirrored in the relationship between Christianity and Judaism.This article examines the relationship between the Jewish laws of war and international law. As Kennedy notes in the opening quote, one way of understanding the relationship between Jewish laws of war and international law is as part of the relationship between international law and its “other.” Kennedy defines Jewish law as mystical, and in so doing he asserts that Jewish law is different in form than state law/international law. Kennedy's opposition of Jewish law and international law is not accidental. It is a direct consequence of the history of international law. As Mutua has noted “[i]nternational law claims to be universal, although its creators have unambiguously asserted its European and Christian origins.” From this point of view, international law has “universalized” its particular origins with the consequence that any non-European or non-Christian tradition is not universal and is the “other.” This fact leads Kennedy to argue that international law has ignored (among many other things) the traces of religion, mysticism and Judaism in its history in its quest to claim secular universality.

scholarly journals ‘Hospital Shields’ and the Limits of International Law

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 439-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neve Gordon ◽  
Nicola Perugini
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Threshold Position ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
Spatial Threshold

Abstract Assaults on hospitals have become part of a widespread warfare strategy, propelling numerous actors to claim that belligerents are not being held accountable for attacking medical units. Acknowledging that international humanitarian law (IHL) offers medical units protections, belligerents often claim that the hospitals were being used to shield military targets and therefore the bombing was legitimate. Tracing the history of hospital bombings alongside the development of legal articles dealing with the protection of medical units, we show how, from the early 20th century, international law has introduced a series of exceptions that legitimize attacks on hospitals that were framed as shields. Next, we demonstrate that the shielding argument justifies bombing hospitals because they have ostensibly assumed a threshold position in-between the two axiomatic poles informing the laws of war – combatants and civilians. We argue, however, that medical units tend to occupy a legal and spatial threshold during war and, since IHL does not have the vocabulary to acknowledge the liminal nature of medical units and identifies between liminality and criminality, it introduces several exceptions that help belligerents legitimize their attacks. By way of conclusion, we maintain that the only way to address the deliberate and widespread destruction of medical units is by reforming the law through the introduction of an absolute ban.

Between anarchy and tyranny: excellence and the pursuit of power and peace in ancient Greece

2001 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 91-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Kokaz
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Peloponnesian War ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Historical Source ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
City States

Ancient Greece is not unfamiliar to International Relations scholars. Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War has been especially influential in shaping our understanding of the ancient Greek international system, not only because it is the best historical source available, but also in light of the status it has achieved as the foremost classic of International Relations. Of particular interest to International Relations have been questions concerning the character of the system and the units within it, and how these have affected the dynamics of conflict and co-operation in the international arena. Many find the antecedents of the modern European states-system in the pattern of relations that emerged between the independent city-states of Hellas roughly between the eighth and fourth centuries BC. Like our contemporary international system, the ancient Greek international system was anarchic in the sense that it lacked an overarching common government.

The Paranoia of the Powerful: Thucydides on World War III

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (01) ◽  
pp. 10-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Ned Lebow
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Aegean Sea ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Peloponnesian War ◽  
World War ◽  
Narrative History ◽  
History Of ◽  
World War Iii ◽  
Insight Into

In the sixteenth year of the Peloponnesian War, an Athenian expedition descended upon the small island of Melos, about 90 miles south of Athens in the Aegean Sea, and demanded that the Melians join in alliance or be destroyed. Although a Spartan colony, Melos had remained scrupulously neutral in the war. Her citizens, unwilling to renounce their independence, sought unsuccessfully to dissuade the Athenians from attacking them. The Athenians explained that an independent Melos situated in the very heart of the Athenian imperium encouraged other island allies to aspire toward independence. Their failure to put an end to the anomaly of Melian independence would therefore be seen by friend and foe alike as a sign of weakness on Athens' part.The really intriguing question about the Melian dialogue is not the Athenian decision to invade Melos but rather Athenian toleration of Melian independence for the first sixteen years of the Peloponnesian War. For surely, if Melian independence constituted a threat to Athens in 416 B.C. it must have done so in 430 B.C., the year in which the war broke out, and in all of the years in between. Why then did Athens wait so long to impose its hegemony over the island? The answer, implicit in Thucydides' narrative history of the Peloponnesian War, contains an important insight into the nature of aggression, one, moreover, that is particularly germane to contemporary international relations.The Athenian reply to the Melians stresses the subjective nature of power; if others think of you as powerful, you are powerful andvice versa. For this reason, states must be concerned about their image abroad and must from time to time offer vivid demonstrations of their capability and resolve. The Athenian invasion of Melos, unnecessary for any strategic reason, was envisaged as such a display.

On Purpose

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
Intelligent Design ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Thought ◽  
The Way

Can we live without the idea of purpose? Should we even try to? Kant thought we were stuck with it, and even Darwin, who profoundly shook the idea, was unable to kill it. Indeed, purpose seems to be making a comeback today, as both religious advocates of intelligent design and some prominent secular philosophers argue that any explanation of life without the idea of purpose is missing something essential. This book explores the history of purpose in philosophical, religious, scientific, and historical thought, from ancient Greece to the present. The book traces how Platonic, Aristotelian, and Kantian ideas of purpose continue to shape Western thought. Along the way, it also takes up tough questions about the purpose of life—and whether it's possible to have meaning without purpose.

JAK LUDOBÓJSTWO ZOSTAŁO UZNANE ZA ZBRODNIĘ – DZIEDZICTWO RAFAŁA LEMKINA

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam MCFARLAND ◽  
Katarzyna HAMER
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Genocide Convention ◽  
Entire Life ◽  
War Crimes Trials ◽  
Criminal Charge ◽  
Short Biography ◽  
The World ◽  
Real Change ◽  
History Of

Raphael Lemkin is hardly known to a Polish audiences. One of the most honored Poles of theXX century, forever revered in the history of human rights, nominated six times for the Nobel PeacePrize, Lemkin sacrificed his entire life to make a real change in the world: the creation of the term“genocide” and making it a crime under international law. How long was his struggle to establishwhat we now take as obvious, what we now take for granted?This paper offers his short biography, showing his long road from realizing that the killing oneperson was considered a murder but that under international law in 1930s the killing a million wasnot. Through coining the term “genocide” in 1944, he helped make genocide a criminal charge atthe Nuremburg war crimes trials of Nazi leaders in late 1945, although there the crime of genocidedid not cover killing whole tribes when committed on inhabitants of the same country nor when notduring war. He next lobbied the new United Nations to adopt a resolution that genocide is a crimeunder international law, which it adopted on 11 December, 1946. Although not a U.N. delegate – hewas “Totally Unofficial,” the title of his autobiography – Lemkin then led the U.N. in creating theConvention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted 9 December, 1948.Until his death in 1958, Lemkin lobbied tirelessly to get other U.N. states to ratify the Convention.His legacy is that, as of 2015, 147 U.N. states have done so, 46 still on hold. His tomb inscriptionreads simply, “Dr. Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959), Father of the Genocide Convention”. Without himthe world as we know it, would not be possible.

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