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The Verdict of Battle: The Law of Victory and the Making of Modern War. By James Q. Whitman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. Pp. vii, 323. Index. $29.95, £22.95, Є27.00.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Robert D. Sloane*
Affiliation:
Boston University School of Law

Abstract

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Type
Recent Books on International Law
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 2013

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References

1 E.g., John Fabian Witt, Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History (2013); Mary L. Dudziak, War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences (2012).

2 For one scholar’s reflection on these issues in the context of modern warfare carried out by liberal democracies, see Blum, Gabriella, The Fog of Victory, 24 Eur. J. Int’l L. 391 (2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Lauterpacht, Hersch, The Problem of the Revision of the Law of War, 29 Brit. Y.B. Int’l. L. 360, 382 (1952)Google Scholar.

4 Sloane, Robert D., Prologue to a Voluntarist War Convention, 106 Mich. L. Rev. 443, 444–45 (2007)Google Scholar.

5 See generally Mark Osiel, The End of Reciprocity: Terror, Torture, and the Law of War (2009).

6 See, e.g., David A. Bell, Is War Civilized?, New Republic, Mar. 3, 2013.

7 See, e.g., Neff, Stephen C., War and the Law of Nations: A General History 11, 96 (2005)Google Scholar; Johnson, James Turner, The Just War Idea: The State of the Question, Soc. Phil. & Pol’y, Jan. 2006, at 167, 168–71Google Scholar; O’brien, William V., The Conduct of Just and Limited War 5, 11, 13 (1981)Google Scholar.

8 Sloane, Robert D., The Cost of Conflation: Preserving the Dualism of Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello in the Contemporary Law of War , 34 Yale J. Int’l L. 47, 61 (2009)Google Scholar.

9 See, e.g., id. at 60–61 & nn. 81– 86.

10 Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795).

11 Even the most extreme version of this aspirational idea, which is far from a consensus ethically or among international lawyers, does not “oblige the international community to use coercive measures against evil regimes.” That is a mischaracterization. In fairness, however, it is true that some influential documents refer to a responsibility to protect and enumerate criteria for it redolent of those found in early just war theory. See A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility: Report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change, UN Doc. A/59/565, para. 207 (2004>).

12 See generally Michael Ignatieff, The War Rior’s Honor 109–63 (1999).

13 Taylor, Telford, Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy 40 (1970)Google Scholar.

14 E.g., Normand, Roger & af Jochnick, Chris, The Legitimation of Violence: A Critical History of the Laws of War, 35 Harv. L. Rev. 49 (1994)Google Scholar.

15 UN Charter, art. 2, para. 4.