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Professor Stephen Humphreys

This course is available on the LLM (extended part-time), LLM (full-time), MSc in Human Rights and University of Pennsylvania Law School LLM Visiting Students. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course has a limited number of places and demand is typically high. This may mean that you’re not able to get a place on this course.

Some prior knowledge of international law is useful but not essential. LL4A8 is useful but not essential.

This course covers the international law governing the conduct of hostilities (jus in bello, also known as the law of armed conflict (LOAC) and international humanitarian law (IHL))—as distinct from the law on the resort to force (jus ad bellum), which is covered in a separate course (LL4A8). The course will take a critical and historical approach to the international regulation and facilitation of armed conflict. As well as the laws governing the means and methods of war (‘Hague’ law), the ‘protected’ groups hors de combat (‘Geneva’ law), and the distinction between international and non-international armed conflict, the course will cover ‘lawfare’ more generally: the recourse to law as an element of the waging of war. It will examine the application of the laws of war, including occupation law, in historical, actual, and ongoing conflicts, including recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, the ‘war on terror’, Ukraine, Gaza, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Students can expect to have a thorough grasp of the principles and regulations governing the conduct of hostilities, the context and efficacy of enforcement mechanisms, and a critical understanding of the normative and political stakes of international law in this area.

This course will have two hours of teaching content each week in Winter Term. There will be a Reading Week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

Students have the option of submitting a 1,800 word essay at the end of Week 6.

It is worthwhile acquiring the following book: Yoram Dinstein, The Conduct of Hostilities Under the Law of International Armed Conflict (Cambridge UP, 4th ed., 2022). Good backgrounders are Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (Basic books, 4th ed. 2006); David Kennedy, Of Law and War (Princeton UP, 2006): Geoffrey Best, War and Law Since 1945 (Oxford UP, 1997). Current debates in this field are very lively on blogs such as Opinio Juris, EJILTalk! and Lawfare. Detailed readings for each seminar will be made available on Moodle.

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours and 30 minutes) in the spring exam period.