The changing face of enmity: Carl Schmitt’s international theory and the evolution of the legal concept of war

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wouter G. Werner
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Analytical Tool ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Irregular Warfare ◽  
Security Threat ◽  
Legal Concept ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
International Theory

The past few decades have witnessed a renewed interest in the work of Carl Schmitt. Scholars from various disciplines have claimed that Schmitt’s critique of universalism, together with his analysis of irregular warfare, provides useful lenses to make sense of the post 9/11 world. In this article, I will critically assess whether Schmitt’s work is indeed useful for understanding the post 9/11 world. To that end, I will concentrate on one of the core arguments put forward by Schmitt: that the laws of armed conflict are unable to regulate irregular warfare, including acts of terrorism. In order to determine the validity of Schmitt’s arguments, I will focus on one of the instruments used in contemporary counter-terrorism policies: the deliberate killing of specific individuals who are regarded as a security threat (‘targeted killing’). Based on an analysis of US and Israeli practice, the article argues that using Schmitt’s work as an analytical tool yields mixed results. While his analysis of irregular warfare remains relevant for contemporary conflicts, his denouncement of universalism blinds us to the transformational potential of international law.

Contingency in International Law

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
International Law ◽  
Present State ◽  
Foreign Investment ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
The Past ◽  
Present Volume ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Way

This volume asks a question that is deceptive in its simplicity: Could international law have been otherwise? In other words, what were the past possibilities, if any, for a different law? The search for contingency in international law is often motivated, including in the present volume, by the refusal to accept the present state of affairs and by the hope that recovering possibilities of the past will facilitate a different future. The volume situates the search for contingency theoretically and within many fields of international law, such as human rights and armed conflict, migrants and refugees, the sea and natural resources, and foreign investment and trade. Today there is hardly a serious account that would consider the path of international law to be necessary and that would deny the possibility of a different law altogether. At the same time, however, behind every possibility of the past stands a reason – or reasons – why the law developed as it did. Those who embark in search of contingency soon encounter tensions when they want to recover past possibilities without downplaying patterns of determination and domination. Nevertheless, while warring critical sensibilities may point in different directions, only a keen sense of why things turned out the way they did makes it possible to argue about how they could plausibly have turned out differently.

Extraterritorial targeting by means of armed drones: Some legal implications

2014 ◽  
Vol 96 (893) ◽  
pp. 67-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelena Pejic
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Jus In Bello ◽  
Jus Ad Bellum ◽  
The Past ◽  
Legal Implications ◽  
Drone Strikes

AbstractThe use of “drones” has grown exponentially over the past decade, giving rise to a host of legal and other issues. Internationally, it is the utilization of armed drones by States for the extraterritorial targeting of persons that has generated significant debate. This article attempts to outline some aspects of the relevant legal framework, with a focus on the international law applicable to drone strikes in situations of armed conflict. It briefly addresses thejus ad bellumand then centres on thejus in bello, addressing, in turn, questions related to when there is an armed conflict, what the rules on targeting are, who may be targeted and where persons may be targeted.

A Decade Later and Still on Target: Revisiting the 2006 Israeli Targeted Killing Decision

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamar Meshel
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
International Law ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Targeted Killing ◽  
State Terror ◽  
Counter Terrorism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Israeli Supreme Court ◽  
The Impact

The increasing use by States of extraterritorial targeted killing as a counter-terrorism tool in recent years has given rise to controversial questions concerning its legality under international law. This article first explores the international legal regimes purporting to govern State-sponsored targeted killing and evaluates their ability to effectively regulate it. It then focuses on the use of targeted killing by States against members of non-State terror groups in an international armed conflict. In this regard, the article revisits the 2006 landmark decision of the Israeli Supreme Court in the Targeted Killing case and evaluates its influence and legacy over the past decade. It argues that this decision remains relevant and instructive since it exposes some of the lingering weaknesses of international law in governing the use of targeted killing as a counter-terrorism tool, while at the same time demonstrating how such weaknesses may be overcome within the existing international legal framework. The impact of the decision in this regard is clearly evident in the evolution of Israel’s targeted killing practice over the past decade.

scholarly journals The Vulnerability of the Penis: Sexual Violence against Men in Conflict and Security Frames

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 778-800 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janine Natalya Clark
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Human Security ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Male Victims ◽  
Security Threat ◽  
The Core

Sexual violence remains a persistent scourge of war. The use of sexual violence against men in armed conflict, however, remains underresearched and is often sidelined. As an explanation, this interdisciplinary article situates the issue of sexual violence against men within a new analytical framework. It does so through a focus on the core subtext which this violence reveals—the vulnerability of the penis. Highlighting critical disconnects between what the penis is and what it is constructed as being, it argues that the vulnerable penis destabilizes the edifice of phallocentric masculinity, and hence it has wider security implications. Conflict-related sexual violence has increasingly been securitized within the framework of human security. The concept of human security, however, is deeply gendered and often excludes male victims of sexual violence. This gendering, in turn, reflects a broader gendered relationship between sexual violence and security. Sexual violence against women manifests and reaffirms their long-recognized vulnerability in war. Sexual violence against men, in contrast, exposes the vulnerability of the penis and thus represents a deeper security threat. Fundamentally, preserving the integrity and power of the phallus is critical to the security and integrity of phallocentric masculinity and thus to maintaining a systemic stability that is crucial in situations of war and armed conflict.

Introducing the International Theory of Carl Schmitt: International Law, International Relations, and the Present Global Predicament(s)

2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
LOUIZA ODYSSEOS ◽  
FABIO PETITO
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Multidisciplinary Research ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
International Theory ◽  
Research Platform ◽  
Global War

In this piece we introduce and contextualize the contributions to the special focus on the international theory of Carl Schmitt, and argue that Carl Schmitt's much neglected international thought can provide scholars of both international relations and international law with a new common multidisciplinary research platform pivotal in thinking about the present international predicaments of crisis in international order and legitimacy, of contested liberal hegemony, and of the issue of unipolarity and the emergence of new forms of warfare, such as terrorism and the ‘global war on terror’.

GENOCIDE AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: DISPELLING THE CONCEPTUAL FOG

2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 280-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Altman
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Moral Concept ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
Legal Concept ◽  
The Core

AbstractGenocide and crimes against humanity are among the core crimes of international law, but they also carry great moral resonance due to their indissoluble link to the atrocities of the Nazi regime and to other egregious episodes of mass violence. However, the concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity are not well understood, even by the international lawyers and jurists who are most concerned with them. A conceptual fog hovers around the discussion of these two categories of crime. In this paper, I draw a number of distinctions aimed at clarifying the concepts. I distinguish three concepts of genocide, two legal and one moral, and two concepts of crimes against humanity, a legal and a moral one. I criticize the current legal concept of genocide and, using the idea of discrimination, propose a model for developing a more adequate legal concept and for better understanding the moral concept. I also criticize the moral concept of crimes against humanity, which many thinkers have conflated with the legal concept of such crimes.

Case Analysis: Crimes Against Humanity After Tadić

2000 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 373-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoram Dinstein
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Rome Statute ◽  
Case Analysis ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
The Core ◽  
Legal Texts

Crimes against humanity were first defined, for the purposes of the Nuremberg Trial, in 1945. Since then, numerous international legal texts have incorporated the concept, the latest being the Rome Statute of the ICC, 1998. The different texts offer diverse definitions of crimes against humanity, which are traced in the article. Although the precise outlines of the crimes change from one definition to another, it is clear that the core has crystallized as an integral part of customary international law. In the Tadić case, the ICTY had to address several crucial issues relating to crimes against humanity. The judgments on appeal will serve as precedents for the removal of the linkage between crimes against humanity and armed conflict, the exclusion of isolated attacks against civilians and the irrelevance of the personal motives of the defendant.

scholarly journals Space and Relic in Frank Paci’s Black Madonna

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-194
Author(s):  
Eveljn Ferraro
Keyword(s):  
Regional Identity ◽  
Analytical Tool ◽  
Place And Space ◽  
Family Work ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
Black Madonna ◽  
Spatial Movement ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Immigrant Generations

This essay investigates Frank Paci’s dominant themes of death and life in Black Madonna and the author’s use of relics to retrace post-migrant spaces. I examine his connections between immigrant and post-immigrant generations in the microcosm of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and the way he preserves memories of the past (family, work, religious practices) while refashioning an Italian regional identity from a deterritorialized position. My approach to the themes of death, life, Italianness, and gender relationships is shaped by Michel de Certeau’s theories of place and space. Relics are defined here as something that survives the passage of time––either at a specific location or across spatial movement––and is invested with a sense of devotion. My argument is that Paci’s writing is devotional insofar as it preserves the memory of immigrants by disseminating the text with different kinds of traces (e.g., human, behavioural, linguistic). In function, memories act as relics. However, Paci’s writing is ambivalent towards memory, since quests for emancipation are also forcefully voiced by the author as challenges to preservation. This tension is at the core of Black Madonna, where Italian immigrants, practices, and places are represented as outdated, dead, or doomed to disappear, and yet deserving recognition and affection. In my view, Paci’s writing is more compelling when the relic as “place” interacts with a narrative of practices (or operations) that defy stability and actualize “spaces.” I will refer to this as a narrative of mobilized relics. Relics are a valid analytical tool to investigate the ties with Italy and ethnicity in the passage from immigrants to post-immigrant generations, from one historical subject to another, both of which are liminally positioned between cultures. In this sense, Black Madonna’s exploration of an Italian-Canadian microcosm spurs further transnational investigations of contemporary Italian identity through the migrant intergenerational lens.  

Sources in the Anti-Formalist Tradition

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mónica García-Salmones Rovira
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Past Century ◽  
New Haven ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Principles ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Domestic Law

This chapter traces the legal and political principles of two important schools of the twentieth century—the New Haven School and the School of Carl Schmitt—and situates them in their geographical and historical contexts. It analyses commonalities and especially differences in their political and legal projects. The chapter further argues that reaction against a naïve positivism reigning during the past century in international law essentially determined developments in both schools’ understanding of the concept of sources of law. In the discussion of Schmitt, the chapter focuses on sources of domestic law and seeks to understand the relationship between the sources of domestic and international law as Schmitt saw it through the notion of ‘concrete order thinking’. Finally, this chapter also addresses a trait shared by New Haven and Schmitt when connecting sources of law with politics, international organizations, and institutions.

scholarly journals LEGITIMATE DEFENSE DIMENSIONS ACCORDING TO INTERNATIONAL LAW AGAINST ISIS

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sedigheh Khodadadipour ◽  
Behsar Shahani Moghaddam
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
International Law ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Internal Armed Conflict ◽  
The Past ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
Global Events

Since some individuals become superior to others through possessing facilities and cruel approaches, human beings have seen torture and inhuman behaviors for ruthless intents. Over the past few years, ISIS has been the focus of global events, including the Middle East strategic area. Syria's internal armed conflict has been a context for widespread and systematic violation of human rights, humanitarian law and the growth of the activities and the formation of terrorist groups. Among these terrorist groups, there is the Islamic State of Iraq and the Syria or (ISIS) which has emerged in the Middle East since 2013 and is sponsored by some of certain Western and Arabic countries. ISIS terrorist group, by claiming the establishment of Islamic regime in Iraq, through implementing actions far from human values, has committed crimes which cause pain for the soul of every freethinking human.

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