The search for the causes of disease is an obvious central step in the pursuit of better health through disease prevention. In the previous chapters we looked at how we measure health (or disease) and how we look for associations between exposure and disease. Being able to identify a relation between a potential cause of disease and the disease itself is not enough, though. If our goal is to change practice or policy in order to improve health, then we need to go one step further and decide whether the relation is causal because, if it is not, intervening will have no effect. As in previous chapters, we discuss causation mainly in the context of an exposure causing disease but, as you will see when we come to assessing causation in practice, the concepts apply equally to a consideration of whether a potential preventive measure really does improve health.

Chapter 4 looks at the concept of combatants and non-combatants, and its connected status, that of prisoner of war (POW). It examines who is entitled under IHL to combatant status, and examines those persons who have been denied combatant and POW status under IHL. Particular attention is paid to the status of resistance fighters, national liberation and guerrilla fighters, those participating in a levée en masse, and participants in non-international armed conflicts. The chapter outlines those categories of participant not entitled to combatant status such as spies, mercenaries, so-called unlawful combatants, and private military and security contractors. Chapter 4 also explores the current legal thinking regarding a contentious area of the law – that of civilians taking direct part in hostilities. The rules regarding POW status and the treatment of POWs are described. The chapter concludes by examining another developing area of the law: the power of detention in non-international armed conflicts.

Makes a case for the indispensibility of psychology to developing a sociology at the level of the individual. The pluality of factors affecting each agent include Dispositions, Socialization, Temporality and Situational Contexts.

This chapter considers non-state actors. It argues that only organized, not simply aggregate, groups can have a moral duty to securitize. This chapter goes on to examine relevant sub-state actors’ duties to securitize insiders and outsiders. Sub-state actors are permitted to securitize only when the state they reside in fails in its duty to deliver security. In such cases, relevant actors have a pro tanto obligation to securitize insiders; however, in situations where a quasi-social contract is established this duty evolves into an overriding duty. Outsiders are not – unlike in all the other chapters of this book – people in other states, but rather people not represented by the sub-state actor. Here, a pro tanto obligation to securitize outsiders is largely based on capacity.

IR typically understands levels as levels of analysis that produce analytic/reductionist (rather than systemic/relational) explanations. Causes, separated by levels, are looked at as independent variables understood as distinct sources of explanation. Systemic explanations rely instead on related elements and levels of organization that are (understood to be) in the world (not just convenient epistemic devices). Systems approaches claim that parts on one level are organized into higher-level wholes that are themselves structured parts of still-higher-level wholes. (For example, subatomic particles, atoms, elements, chemical compounds.) The chapter concludes by examining the implications of a levels of organization framing for four important metatheoretical issues: micro–macro relations, the agent–structure problem, the natures of individual human beings and social groups, and the natures of individual and group identities.

This chapter discusses the position (and especially protection) of the individual in international law, whether through human rights law, refugee law, the right to self-determination, or other means

This chapter discusses the subjects of international law: how states come into being, and how international organizations are created.

In the traditional economic model, people have well-defined preferences and pursue them consistently and selfishly. According to this model wellbeing is efficiently promoted by the free market except for various problems, the biggest of which is ’externality’. This is the way in which people affect other people without their agreement.

However there are in fact many other problems. People often lack self-control (e.g., over drugs, alcohol, and gambling). They often do not realise how much they will adapt to change, and they put effort into new acquisitions which make less difference to them than they expect. They are hugely affected by how decisions are framed. People are hugely loss-averse which often makes desirable changes much more difficult. And, on the other side, they often help each other without expecting anything in return.

These complexities mean that government intervention or nudges are often needed to produce efficient outcomes. These arguments become even stronger when we consider the many pervasive ’externalities’ affecting our experience: We benefit if we live in a trustworthy society; we get many of our norms and tastes from society; because of rivalry we lose wellbeing if others are more successful.

Following the finding in Chapter 3 that reciprocity encounters limitations when the subjects of a legal relationship are not equal, this chapter analyses the role of reciprocity in rules pertaining to the treatment of individuals in international law, assessing how reciprocity functions differently depending on who rights are owed to in different substantive areas of law. First looking at historical standards of treatment including those based on reciprocity and the use of the minimum standard of treatment, the chapter goes on to examine how reciprocity functions in national treatment and the most-favoured nation clause. The chapter then goes on to examine the treatment of individuals under human rights, international humanitarian law, and international investment law, analyzing the differences that arise in the role of reciprocity when the legal obligations in question are owed directly to individuals. The chapter ends with an examination of recent developments in diplomatic protection.

This chapter is structured in seven parts: position of individual, human rights, international refugee law, nationality and statelessness, international terrorism, international health law and international criminal law. The second part covers the denial of a Ukrainian extradition request by a German court, and Germany’s concerns over human rights of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The fourth part assesses a decision by a German court that there is no Palestinian State and no Palestinian nationality. The fifth covers the Federal Prosecutor General accusing Russia of State-ordered murder. The seventh encompasses a German court’s sentence against a member of the Syrian opposition for war crimes against persons, the Federal Public Prosecutor General declining to bring charges against members of the Federal Government for aiding the killing of Iranian General Soleimani, a German court sentencing the handing over of a child to an ‘Islamic State’ training camp in Syria as a war crime of enlisting children, the conviction of an IS member by a German court for aiding and abetting a crime against humanity by enslavement and the conviction of an IS member of war crimes by a German court.

How do we define the state in international law, and what is its relationship to individuals? We begin by outlining the state as a legal concept and differentiating it from similar concepts. We then explore the legal personality of the state under international law, including the elements of statehood, absolute and restrictive immunity, and state responsibility. The problems of state recognition (or non-recognition) of other states and governments is a key to understanding how states interact, as are changes in state status (e.g., secession or other consequential changes).  The last half of the chapter is devoted to the reciprocal responsibilities state and individuals have toward one another, focusing on nationality, citizenship, refugees, statelessness, and the state’s treatment of foreign nationals.

The goal of this paper is to discuss which basic semantic entities we should include in our formal semantic ontology, and on which principles we should include them (cf. Bach 1986b). The vast majority of formal theories employ individuals as a basic type; they represent quantification over, modification of, and reference to individuals. But many theories include additional types or entities, including possible worlds, but also less common ones like vectors. Some papers have argued that types should be constrained or reduced; others that they should be proliferated. I present some representative arguments on both sides and suggest a path forward in evaluating them against one another.

Building on the work in Chapters 2 and 3 we now consider how we can take a broadly scientific approach, in Popper’s terms, to the study of language when we have demonstrated that linguistics does not fit easily within his framework. A key step in that process occurs in this chapter when we reconsider linguistics as a social science, though we also give consideration to its role in the digital humanities. Our conception of linguistics as a principally social science shows how we can take linguistics and deal with it in a way broadly in line with the framework specified in Chapters 2 and 3 while also dealing with those elements of it which do not easily fit a natural science framework.

Under international law, individual responsibility exists for violation of jus cogens norms, which include arbitrary deprivation of life, resulting from acts or omissions. Peremptory norms of international law are binding not only on all States, corporations, armed groups, and organisations, but also on individuals. As the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic declared in 2012: ‘at a minimum, human rights obligations constituting peremptory international law (ius cogens) bind States, individuals and non-State collective entities, including armed groups’. While the most obvious route for realising individual responsibility for a violation of the right to life is through the criminal law – domestic or international – there are also civil remedies available in certain States. This is most notably the case in the United States (US), based on the Alien Tort Statute of 1789 or actions under Section 1983 of the US Code.

Interdisciplinary research of international law has been on the rise in recent decades and scholars have adopted widely varying disciplines, methodologies, and theoretical frameworks to investigate international legal behavior. However, it is this chapter’s contention that a lion’s share of the literature on international legal behavior has understated the role of individual people in international law. Although international law is made, implemented, changed, or broken by people, this ontological insight has not found its way into influential paradigmatic views of international law and consequently has not been adequately embedded in methodologies, theoretical accounts, and research agendas. This chapter offers an illustrative review of relevant scholarship, critiques the scholarship’s statism and outlines its implications. It uses the United States case of the Torture Memos as a means to demonstrate the pitfalls of the literature’s statism and the potential benefits of steering away from it. The chapter therefore argues that future interdisciplinary work of international law would benefit from ridding itself of the dominance of paradigmatic statism and instead recognizing the central role of individuals in the everyday practice of international law.

Historically, the central actor in the story of international law has been the nation-state, which has led to a rich array of theories about state behavior, such as realism, liberalism, and constructivism that continue to dominate the study of international law and relations. Today, new challenges such as terrorism, climate change, non-international armed conflict, and cyberespionage require new approaches that ask international law to motivate and constrain the behavior of individuals in addition to nation-states. This has put the study of human behavior at the center of international legal scholarship prompting the rise of behavioral approaches in international legal scholarship. Neuroscience has been critically missing from this discourse even as it is leading the way in providing evidence-based research about human cognition and brain-behavior connections. This chapter introduces neuroscience to the study of international law. It provides a general foundation for understanding the field of neuroscience, describes the existing literature at the intersection of law and neuroscience – neurolaw – and considers how to begin constructing the foundations, frameworks, and central agenda for interdisciplinary connections between neuroscience and international law. The chapter concludes by identifying several areas of study in international law that may benefit from neuroscientific insights.