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)
- 5 Collisions of naked interest
- 6 Tame and half-hearted war: intervention, reprisal and necessity
- 7 Civil strife
- PART IV Just wars reborn (1919–)
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Table of cases
- Table of treaties
- Index
5 - Collisions of naked interest
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)
- 5 Collisions of naked interest
- 6 Tame and half-hearted war: intervention, reprisal and necessity
- 7 Civil strife
- PART IV Just wars reborn (1919–)
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Table of cases
- Table of treaties
- Index
Summary
International Law, as such, … does not consider the justice or injustice of a war. From the purely legal standpoint, all wars are equally just or unjust; or, properly speaking, they are neither just nor unjust. International Law merely takes cognizance of the existence of war as a fact, and prescribes certain rules and regulations which affect the rights and duties of neutrals and belligerents during that continuance. The justice of war in general or of a certain war in particular are questions of the gravest importance and of the most vital interest, but they belong to the domain of international ethics or morality rather than to that of International Law.
Amos HersheyIn the nineteenth century, the two dissident streams of thought on war, together with the voluntary-law portion of the mainstream tradition, were woven together to form a grand, if sometimes uneasy, synthesis to which the label ‘positivism’ has been affixed. This achievement marked, in many ways, the logical culmination of trends that had been developing since the seventeenth century. One result was to make the law of war more elaborate and detailed than it had ever been before. In fact, it brought so much order and detail to the subject as to make of war an institution of law, as routine and dispassionately studied as, say, the law of inheritance or trusts or contract. Like them, war was an everyday feature of the social world.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- War and the Law of NationsA General History, pp. 167 - 214Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005