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Volume 2 Contents
Articles
- Implementing Human Rights in ASEAN Countries: "Promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep" by
Li-ann Thio
Abstract
- Court Performance Around the World: A Comparative Perspective by Maria Dakolias
Abstract
- The Principle of Discrimination in 21st Century Warfare by Michael N. Schmitt
In this article, Professor Schmitt addresses changes in military technology and the implications of these changes for the humanitarian law of war, with particular focus on the principle of discrimination. Evolution in the machinery of warfare can be expected to improve the precision with which objects may be targeted. At the same time, this evolution may complicate considerations of what constitutes a legally permissible target. As technologically advanced militaries become increasingly interdependent with the infrastructure of civilian life, the line between legal military objectives and protected civilian objects may become blurred. The international legal questions posed by this change will be particularly thorny in the case of warfare between technologically advanced military powers and less developed nations. In the short term, technologically disadvantaged States might have incentives to support a broad definition of legally permissible targets. Alternately, they might support a subjective standard, in which the technological capacity of a belligerent State partially determines its legal obligations. Professor Schmitt argues, however, that such an expansion of permissible military objectives would not only disserve the goals of humanitarian law, but ultimately prove disadvantageous to all States.
Notes
- A Comparative and International Law Perspective on the United States (Non)Compliance with its Duty of Non-Refoulement by Kathleen Keller
New Developments
- Quito Declaration, Preface by Chris Jochnick & Javier Mujica Petit
- Quito Declaration on the Enforcement and Realization of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Latin America and the Caribbean
Masthead
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