This is a textbook for law students and upper-division undergraduates. A military background is not required. The text takes the interested reader from the essentials of the law of armed conflict (LOAC) to an awareness of some finer points of battlefield law. The text refers to hundreds of cases, including American courts-martial. Many are dealt with in detail, most only in passing, but all contribute to an understanding of LOAC or, as civilians refer to it, international humanitarian law (IHC). (I often follow the lead of the Geneva Conventions in referring to it as the law of armed conflict.) The text concentrates exclusively on jus in bello – law on the battlefield – to the exclusion of jus ad bellum, the lawfulness of the resort to force. It does not include law of war at sea or law of air warfare.

This is not a national security law text nor a history book, nor an ethics study. Elements of those are inextricably included, particularly history, but they are not the main focus. The essentials are here: Exactly, what are “the law of armed conflict” and “international humanitarian law”?