Armed Conflict at the Threshold?

37 Pages Posted: 27 Feb 2018

See all articles by Deborah N. Pearlstein

Deborah N. Pearlstein

Princeton University - Program in Law & Public Policy; Yeshiva University - Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law; Princeton University

Date Written: February 26, 2018

Abstract

Sixteen years into the United States’ engagement in what it has controversially understood as a global, non-international armed conflict against a shifting set of terrorist groups, a growing array of scholars has called for a reassessment of the significance of the “armed conflict” classification under international humanitarian law (IHL). The existence of an “armed conflict” has long been understood as a proxy on/off switch of inescapable importance. When an “armed conflict” exists, lethal targeting, without regard to particular self-defensive need or immediacy of threat, is permitted as a first resort. When an “armed conflict” does not exist, it is not. Challenging the wisdom of this categorical switch, critics raise a range of concerns: the line dividing which circumstances count as “armed conflict” and which do not is no longer clear or stable enough to provide meaningful guidance; current definitions may compromise humanitarian interests, prospects for criminal justice or both; most important, the “armed conflict” classification no longer reflects current moral, political, or strategic sensibilities about the role of lethal force in an age in which global threats have changed. This Essay contends that while the criticisms are important, they fail on their own terms to justify the abandonment of “armed conflict” as a proxy determinant of first-resort killing. More fundamentally, while classification critics recognize acutely the many changes in the nature of conflict since World War II, they attend far less to systemic changes in the development of international law during that time. Taking the “armed conflict” classification debate as a case study, this Essay highlights how critiques of international law’s substance may continue to embrace increasingly outmoded, World War-II era assumptions about the inadequacy of the international legal system to address problems inherent in all law: interpretive uncertainty, law violation, and social change.

Keywords: armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, War on Terror, international humanitarian, conflict classification

Suggested Citation

Pearlstein, Deborah N., Armed Conflict at the Threshold? (February 26, 2018). Virginia Journal of International Law, Forthcoming, Cardozo Legal Studies Research Paper No. 537, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3130225

Deborah N. Pearlstein (Contact Author)

Princeton University - Program in Law & Public Policy ( email )

Wallace Hall
Princeton, NJ 08544
United States

Yeshiva University - Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law ( email )

55 Fifth Ave.
New York, NY 10003
United States

Princeton University ( email )

United States

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