Chapter

Attack decision-making : context, reasonableness, and the duty to obey

Geoffrey S. Corn

The impact of emerging technologies on the law of armed conflict

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2019

p. 325-374

English

Section II of this chapter reviews the proportionality rule, considering both implementation complexities and the criticality of effective implementation. Section III summarizes the law establishing the duty to obey orders and the limits of that duty. Section IV outlines the targeting process in order to provide the context for considering how to most effectively implement the proportionality obligation. This includes exploring the differences between deliberate and time-sensitive attack decision-making and assessing the fundamental differences between “individualized” deliberate attacks and operations conducted pursuant to the concept of mission command. Section IV also proposes how these different operational contexts necessitate a very different implementation focus. Section V considers the intersection of the duty to obey and implementation of the proportionality obligation, and how this intersection indicates the need to reconsider the relationship between the law of disobedience and fully effective implementation of such negative obligation.

• Full text : restricted access (ICRC)

• The impact of emerging technologies on the law of armed conflict / [Ed. by] Eric Talbot Jensen and Ronald T.P. Alcala