Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART I War as law enforcement (to 1600)
- PART II New forces stirring (1600–1815)
- 3 War in due form
- 4 Dissension in the ranks
- PART III War as state policy (1815–1919)
- PART IV Just wars reborn (1919–)
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Table of cases
- Table of treaties
- Index
3 - War in due form
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART I War as law enforcement (to 1600)
- PART II New forces stirring (1600–1815)
- 3 War in due form
- 4 Dissension in the ranks
- PART III War as state policy (1815–1919)
- PART IV Just wars reborn (1919–)
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Table of cases
- Table of treaties
- Index
Summary
A definite formality in the conduct of war was introduced by the law of nations, and … particular effects follow wars waged in accordance with such formality …. Hence arises the distinction … between a war which, according to the law of nations, is formally declared and is called legal, that is a complete war; and a war not formally declared, which nevertheless does not on that account cease to be a legal war.
Hugo GrotiusThe just-war tradition, inherited directly from the Middle Ages, continued to be the dominant framework for legal analyses of war throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For example, the Dutch judge Cornelius van Bynkershoek, writing in 1738, defined war as ‘a contest of independent persons carried on by force or fraud for the sake of asserting their rights’. Vattel, in a similar spirit, referred to the right of states ‘to use force to obtain justice, if it can not otherwise be had, or to follow up one's rights by force of arms’. In the 1760s, William Blackstone, the influential English legal commentator, defined war as ‘an appeal to the God of hosts to punish such infractions of public faith as are committed by one independent people against another; neither state having any superior jurisdiction to resort to upon earth for justice’. These expressions of just-war sentiments, however, were anachronisms by the time they were pronounced.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- War and the Law of NationsA General History, pp. 95 - 130Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005