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Legitimate targets? Social construction, international law and US bombing

Dill, Janina (2015) Legitimate targets? Social construction, international law and US bombing. Cambridge Studies in International Relations. (133). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. ISBN 9781107056756

Full text not available from this repository.
Identification Number: 10.1017/CBO9781107297463

Abstract

Based on an innovative theory of international law, Janina Dill's book investigates the effectiveness of international humanitarian law (IHL) in regulating the conduct of warfare. Through a comprehensive examination of the IHL defining a legitimate target of attack, Dill reveals a controversy among legal and military professionals about the 'logic' according to which belligerents ought to balance humanitarian and military imperatives: the logics of sufficiency or efficiency. Law prescribes the former, but increased recourse to international law in US air warfare has led to targeting in accordance with the logic of efficiency. The logic of sufficiency is morally less problematic, yet neither logic satisfies contemporary expectations of effective IHL or legitimate warfare. Those expectations demand that hostilities follow a logic of liability, which proves impracticable. This book proposes changes to international law, but concludes that according to widely shared normative beliefs, on the twenty-first-century battlefield there are no truly legitimate targets.

Item Type: Book
Official URL: http://www.cambridge.org/
Additional Information: © 2015 The Author
Divisions: International Relations
Subjects: J Political Science > JZ International relations
K Law > K Law (General)
Date Deposited: 07 Mar 2017 10:13
Last Modified: 18 Apr 2024 23:27
URI: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/69684

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