Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART I War as law enforcement (to 1600)
- PART II New forces stirring (1600–1815)
- PART III War as state policy (1815–1919)
- PART IV Just wars reborn (1919–)
- 8 Regulating war
- 9 Farewell to war?
- 10 New fields of battle
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Table of cases
- Table of treaties
- Index
9 - Farewell to war?
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)
- PART III War as state policy (1815–1919)
- PART IV Just wars reborn (1919–)
- 8 Regulating war
- 9 Farewell to war?
- 10 New fields of battle
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Table of cases
- Table of treaties
- Index
Summary
War in the legal sense has been in large measure ‘outlawed’; that is, … international law … no longer recognizes that large-scale hostilities may constitute a ‘state of war’ in which the belligerents are legally equal.
Quincy WrightBanished as a legal institution, war now remains an event calling for legal regulation for the sake of humanity and the dignity of man.
Hersch LauterpachtNever was there a more moralistic conflict than the Second World War. As a contest between Good and Evil, it was seen to be at the furthest possible remove from the positivist conception of war of the nineteenth century, with its amoral focus on clashes between parochial state interests. In 1939–45, humankind itself was the cause. With the spirit of righteousness as heavy in the air as the stench of corpses, it was hardly surprising that just-war ideals should strongly pervade the immediate post-war era. And this time, the task would be far more thoroughly done than in the interwar period. The drafters of the United Nations Charter sought to go beyond the League Covenant and the Pact of Paris, by banning all resorts to armed force and thereby effacing the legal distinction between war and measures short of war. The result was the establishment of a thoroughgoing general norm of pacifism in international relations, directly reminiscent of the pacifistic vision of the early Christian era which had lain at the heart of medieval just-war doctrine.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- War and the Law of NationsA General History, pp. 314 - 356Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005