Sovereignty and the Laws of War: International Consequences of Japan's 1905 Victory over Russia

2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Howland
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
International Conference ◽  
International Diplomacy ◽  
International Audience ◽  
International Laws ◽  
The Hague ◽  
Global War

The Russo–Japanese War (1904–1905), recently commemorated with several international conference volumes, is identified by a majority of contributors as the first modern, global war. In making such a judgment, these scholars note its scale, its nationalism, its colonialism and geopolitical repercussions. What is surprising, however, is that no one has remarked on another significance: it was the first war in which both belligerents pledged to adhere to the international laws of war. In that regard, the Russo–Japanese War marks a culmination of the tireless international diplomacy to secure legal limitations on warfare in the nineteenth century. In 1904, both Russia and Japan justified their operations according to international law, for the benefit of an international audience who had five years earlier celebrated some progress with the signing of The Hague Conventions in 1899.

Future International Laws of War

1939 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 441-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. L. Rodgers
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Military Force ◽  
International Agreement ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
The Past ◽  
International Laws ◽  
The Hague ◽  
Military Strength ◽  
Made In

Undoubtedly the generally recognized rules governing the exertion of military force at any given period are the outcome of social and economic conditions as well as of the development of new modes of attack upon life and property. Yet many believe that new forms of the exertion of military strength may be restrained by international agreement made in time of peace and in the name of humanity. Although such agreements have been made in the past, such as the Hague agreements of 1899 and 1907, not all have been viable. It is doubtful if effective ways of striking down the enemy will be limited by the bare plea of “humanity”. Restraint on the exercise of belligerent force for the sole reason that the sufferings of war are great and cruel is instinctive but not logical, for war is death and injury of persons and destruction of property by which the enemy is forced to submit. As to this matter Oppenheim says in his International Law: … First is the principle that a belligerent should be justified in applying any amount and any kind of force which is necessary for the realization of the purpose of the war—namely, the overpowering of the opponent. Secondly, the principle of humanity is at work, which says that all such kinds and degrees of violence as are not necessary for the overpowering of the enemy should not be permitted to the belligerent.

The Origins of the Concept of Belligerent Occupation

2008 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 621-648 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eyal Benvenisti
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
International Agreement ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Civilian Population ◽  
Delicate Balance ◽  
Gradual Process ◽  
The Hague

The contemporary international law of occupation, which regulates the conduct of occupying forces during wartime, was framed over the course of deliberations among European governments during the second half of the nineteenth century. The debates between representatives of strong and weak powers on this matter dominated the conferences in Brussels (1874) and The Hague (1899), whose goal was to formulate the laws of war through an international agreement. The outcome, enshrined in what is known as the Hague Regulations of 1899,1 represented a delicate balance that both provided protection for a civilian population brought under the control of an occupant and safeguarded the interests of the ousted government for the duration of the occupation. Occupation was conceived of as a temporary regime existing until the conclusion of a peace agreement between the enemy sides (unless the defeated party ceased to exist as a result of the war, a situation referred to as debellatio). The evolution of the law of occupation in the nineteenth century was a gradual process, shaped by changing conceptions about war and sovereignty, as well as by the balance of power emerging in Europe.

The Hague Codification Conference

1930 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 674-693 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hunter Miller
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
International Conference ◽  
The Hague ◽  
Set Up

The Conference for the Codification of International Law which met at The Hague from March 13 to April 12, 1930, was the first international conference specifically called for that purpose.In 1924 the League of Nations set up a Committee of Experts for the progressive codification of international law. The task of that committee was to select and propose for the first conference on codification a certain number of subjects within the field of international law. Three subjects, namely, Nationality, Territorial Waters and The Responsibility of States for Damage Caused in Their Territory to the Person or Property of Foreigners, were finally agreed on as the subjects to be considered by the first conference.

Covenants Without the Sword International Law and the Protection of Civilians in Times of War

2006 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Valentino ◽  
Paul Huth ◽  
Sarah Croco
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
International Law ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Geneva Conventions ◽  
Long Duration ◽  
International Laws ◽  
The Hague ◽  
War Aims

Do the international laws of war effectively protect civilian populations from deliberate attack? In a statistical analysis of all interstate wars from 1900 to 2003 the authors find no evidence that signatories of The Hague or Geneva Conventions intentionally kill fewer civilians during war than do nonsignatories. This result holds for democratic signatories and for wars in which both sides are parties to the treaty. Nor do they find evidence that a state's regime type or the existence of ethnic or religious differences between combatants explains the variation in civilian targeting. They find strong support, however, for their theoretical framework, which suggests that combatants seek to kill enemy civilians when they believe that doing so will coerce their adversaries into early surrender or undermine their adversaries' war-related domestic production. The authors find that states fighting wars of attrition or counterinsurgency, states fighting for expansive war aims, and states fighting wars of long duration kill significantly more civilians than states in other kinds of wars.

A Persian–Dutch Treaty in the Seventeenth Century (1958)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Alexandrowicz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
International Law ◽  
National Treatment ◽  
The Hague ◽  
United Provinces

It is generally believed that commercial treaties between European and Asian powers prior to the nineteenth century focused on the establishments and privileges of European traders in Asia. However, there are exceptions where establishments of Asian traders in Europe received the same type of benefits as those enjoyed by European traders in Asia. This chapter focuses on one example, a treaty concluded on 7 February 1631 at The Hague between the King of Persia and the States General of the United Provinces of the Netherlands in which the latter, in return for privileges accorded to the Dutch in Persia, conceded reciprocal benefits to Persian traders in the Netherlands. In terms of international law, the treaty secured national treatment to Persians, granting them the same franchises and rights as those enjoyed by the inhabitants of the Netherlands, even by persons of quality in high positions whenever they engaged in trade.

Introduction

2000 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-3 ◽  
Author(s):  
George H. Aldrich ◽  
Christine M. Chinkin
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Geneva Convention ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Royal Family ◽  
Scientific Experts ◽  
The Hague ◽  
Financial Burdens ◽  
Preparatory Work

On May 18, 1899, die first Hague Peace Conference was convened in the House in the Woods provided by the Dutch royal family. It was attended by invitation by representatives of twenty-six of the fifty-nine governments that then claimed sovereignty. The hundred delegates included diplomats, statesmen (no stateswomen!), publicists, lawyers, and technical and scientific experts. Unlike earlier peace conferences, which were convened to terminate ongoing armed conflicts, the Hague Conference met in peacetime for the purpose of making law. The conference was called at the initiative of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia with the intentions principally to seek agreements to limit armaments and their consequent financial burdens, and secondarily to improve the prospects for the peaceful setdement of international disputes and to codify the laws of war. Doubtiess, the tsar’s initiative was inspired in part by his grandfather’s earlier success in obtaining the St. Petersburg Declaration of 1868, which prohibited, for humanitarian reasons, the use of explosive projectiles weighing less than four hundred grams. In any event, the Hague Peace Conference pursued a much broader agenda than the meetings at St. Petersburg and was able to draw upon certain preparatory work on the laws of war, including the Geneva Convention on the Amelioration of the Conditions of the Wounded in Armies in the Field of 1864, the draft Project of an International Declaration concerning the Laws and Customs of War produced by the Brussels Conference of 1874, and the Oxford Manual on the laws of war of 1880, which had been adopted unanimously by the Institute of International Law.

scholarly journals Emanations of the informational state: Cyber operations and the difficulties

First Monday ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Braman
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
International Law ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
International Laws ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Political Form ◽  
Over Time

>The Tallinn Manual of 2013 and its second edition, the Tallinn Manual 2.0 of 2017, are NATO-funded analyses of how existing international laws of war apply to cybersecurity and cyberwarfare. The difficulties faced by the groups of legal experts who produced these works often involve fundamental aspects of what it is to be a state altogether, challenging the survival of the state as a dominant political form altogether. These developments, in turn, provide significant challenges to the survival of the Westphalian system within which states have been defined for almost 500 years. This article thinks through the Tallinn manuals from the lens of what debates over the appropriate legal treatment of cyber operations under international law tells us about how the state is being experienced and understood in the second decade of the twenty-first century. Comparative analysis of the first and second editions of the Manual shows that just what the informational state is, what it can do, and what it should be allowed to do is becoming less clear, not more, over time.

Problem stosowania najważniejszych aktów prawa alimentacyjnego międzynarodowego w relacjach polsko-hiszpańskich w kontekście egzekucji alimentów na rzecz przebywającego w Polsce dziecka od zobowiązanego przebywającego w Hiszpanii

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 ◽  
pp. 9-27
Author(s):  
Magdalena Aksamitowska-Kobos, ◽  
Jakub M. Łukasiewicz
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
International Law ◽  
Hague Convention ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Practical Aspect ◽  
International Diplomacy ◽  
The Hague ◽  
New York Convention ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Hague Convention

This publication presents the evolution of international law acts in the scope of alimony execution from the obliged one residing on the territory of Spain, for the benefit of a child, having the enforcement order and residing in Poland. In this context, it is worth noticing that in case of the discussed Polish-Spanish relations, the performance of scientific discourse concerning alimony execution seems particularly interesting, due to the fact that the prescriptive material being a kind of achievement of international diplomacy in the practical aspect, is often useless. Despite the formal introduction of other legal acts, that is the New York Convention of 1956, the Hague Convention of 1973, the Lugano Convention of 1988 and the Brussels I Regulation (regulation 44/2001), it can be stated that during the practical use of law, a jumping evolution occurred which was the fact that Polish courts only utilized the New York convention and skipped other, indicated acts herein, until the moment of implementation of the regulation 4/2009. The aim of the authors is to point the reasons of such a condition and the presentation of the process leading the obtainment of the benefits due to the entitled one.

Humanizing War in the Nineteenth Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 127-152
Author(s):  
Pablo Kalmanovitz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Moral Appraisal ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Chapter 5 examines the integration of the concept of humanity as a legal category into the laws of war in the late nineteenth century. It looks at the writings of Francis Lieber, Johann Caspar Bluntschli, and Gustave Moyner, all of whom were influential publicists and highly articulate voices in the early stages of codification of the laws of war. The chapter highlights the tensions that resulted from integrating the humanity concept into the background paradigm of regular war, and it examines more broadly the deeper transformations in international legal theory that enabled this to happen. The channeling of the humanitarian agenda through international law produced a novel understanding of the laws of war as constituted by two fundamental principles in tension, necessity and humanity. This persistent duality continues to confuse our moral appraisal of the laws of war up to the present.

Between the Geneva Conventions: Where Does the Unlawful Combatant Belong?

2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 378-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shlomy Zachary
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Legal Aspect ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Geneva Conventions ◽  
International Laws ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Terrorist Acts ◽  
Unites States ◽  
New Situation

The growing impact of terrorist acts in the past few years has lead to dramatic changes in the internal laws of the growing number of States that suffer from terrorism, but has also lead to various attempts to adapt international law - more specifically, the International Laws of War - to the new situation or threat, as many perceive it. The Laws of War, like most areas of Public International Law, deal with the relations between nations, while hardly dealing with non-governmental entities like terrorist organisations or the individual terrorist, thereby creating an apparent legal “loophole”. One of the solutions found by States in order to deal, legally, with terrorists, was by defining them “unlawful combatants”.This essay tries to examine the development of the term “unlawful combatant”, by examining some complications that might occur from the use of the term “unlawful combatant” as an intermediate, new status in international law. By using it as a new status. States try to exclude terrorists from finding protection under the Geneva Conventions, which are intended to safeguard various individuals during armed conflicts. After examining the term “unlawful combatant”, both from an historical and legal aspect, this essay will attempt to show that the existing Laws of War, which acknowledge only two statuses – the ‘civilian’ and the ‘combatant’ – provide a satisfactory solution to the problem of terrorism in its non-governmental sense. After exploring recent policies and legal developments in Israel and the Unites States, countries that use the term “unlawful combatant”, this essay will criticise the ambiguity of these definitions, and point out future problems that might arise from this ambiguity during armed conflicts.

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