Book

Fighting at the legal boundaries : controlling the use of force in contemporary conflict

Kenneth Watkin

New York : Oxford University Press, 2016

XII, 704 p. ; 25 cm

978-0-19-045797-6

English

Bibliographie : p. 633-659. Index

The international law governing armed conflict is at a crossroads, as the formal framework of laws designed to control the exercise of self-defense and conduct of inter-state conflict finds itself confronted with violent 21st Century disputes of a very different character. Military practitioners who seek to stay within the bounds of international law often find themselves applying bodies of law - international human rights law, international humanitarian law, international criminal law - in an exclusionary fashion, and adherence to those boundaries can lead to a formal and often rigid application of the law that does not adequately address contemporary security challenges. This book offers a holistic approach towards the application of the various constitutive parts of international law. The author focuses on the interaction between the applicable bodies of law by exploring whether their boundaries are improperly drawn, or are being interpreted in too rigid a fashion. Through a number of case studies, the book explores how the threat posed by insurgents, terrorists, and transnational criminal gangs often occurs not only at the point where these bodies of law interact, but also in situations where there is significant overlap. In this regard, the exercise of the longstanding right of States to defend nationals, including the conduct of operations such as hostage rescue, can involve the application of human rights based law enforcement norms to counter threats transcending the conflict spectrum.