Book

International humanitarian law : theory, practice, context

Daniel Thürer

[The Hague] : Hague academy of international law, 2011

500 p. ; 18 cm

978-90-04-17910-3

English

Bibliographie : p. 444-482

Daniel Thürer deals with war and the means by which international law attempts to contain and, as it were, "humanize" organized violence. But the ambitions of the author go beyond the battlefield. The book explores the many complex ways in which law functions to regulate warfare, in theory and in practice. The author looks into treaties and other sources of international law, but he also tries to step outside the boundaries of "black-letter law" to deal broadly with such matters as the influence of culture in shaping the norms on war, the institutions that develop those norms and work for their universal acceptante, the networks of humanitarian actors in this area and the legal procedures in which the law of war and its various institutions are embedded. The book demonstrates that even wars are, in various ways, conducted in the "shadow of the law".

• Egalement publié dans le Recueil des cours de l'Academie de droit international, T.338, vol. 2008, p. 9-370