Through much of history, lawyers have scrambled to adjust the fine points of the law to a crude and violent world. After 1945, the challenges were as severe as any that had ever been faced previously, largely because of important changes in the kinds of wars that commonly afflicted humankind. Two new kinds of challenge were especially noteworthy. The first was civil conflict, which attained unprecedented prominence, as compared to interstate conflict, in the post-1945 world. In this area, the inheritance of the nineteenth century remained very much in evidence, most notably in the retention of the traditional bias in favour of established governments and against insurgents. Recognition of belligerency and of insurgency were little in evidence, at least on the surface; but it was likely that they were merely sleeping and not dead. Most conspicuous in the way of change was the promotion of one particular category of insurgents from the humble level of rebels to fully fledged belligerents: persons carrying on what came to be called a national liberation struggle. Some regarded this as a welcome extension of just-war ideals. Others saw it as an unwelcome intrusion of ideological considerations into what should be the dispassionate realm of the rules of law.