What are key implications of the current war in Gaza for international law? The coincidence of Israel’s compliance claim with catastrophic civilian suffering highlights the need for international law to discharge its functions in real time, distinguishing ex ante action-guidance and concurrent third-party evaluation while hostilities are ongoing from longer-term ex post accountability. We identify two doctrinal questions that underpin polarized evaluation of Israel’s conduct and that are critical for law’s functionality: first, how to conceptualize belligerent intent, and second, how to evaluate international courts’ early-stage engagement with ongoing conflict. Arguing that attention to the functional differentiation of law’s tasks helps to answer these questions, we (i) clarify the meaning of intent vis-à-vis the conduct of hostilities, starvation, and the genocide allegation and (ii) explore the significance of the ICJ’s indication of provisional measures in South Africa v. Israel for guiding third states’ evaluations of the conflict in real time.

Janina Dill is the Dame Louise Richardson Chair in Global Security at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, a Professorial Fellow of Trinity College Oxford, and Co-Director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict (ELAC). Her research concerns international law on the use of force. In 2021, she won a Philip Leverhulme Prize for work on the moral psychology of war. She also works on a multi-year study on cumulative civilian harm in war funded by a joint grant from the UKRI and the National Science Foundation.

Date: 22 October 2024
Time: 6.00-7.00 pm CET
The presentation will take place online via Zoom. Please mail jessica.oheim@student.uni-tuebingen.de to register or if you have any questions. The Zoom link and login data will be sent to those registered ahead of the event.

TwoLaW is an online lecture series on the theory, history, policy and practice of the laws of war. From Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the Hamas’ attack on Israel and the ensuing conflict in the Middle East, rarely in recent memory have both the ius contra bellum and the ius in bello faced so many daunting challenges: use of force by and self-defence against non-state actors; the participation of private military companies in hostilities; the digitization of warfare; the protection of civilians and the environment in international, non-international and hybrid armed conflicts; peace agreements and post-conflict claims; international criminal responsibility before and beyond the ICC – to name but a few of them. TwoLaW invites engaging discussions on these matters, seeking to bring into dialogue the law on the prohibition of the use of force and international humanitarian law despite their necessary doctrinal separation.

TwoLaW provides a critical perspective on pertinent challenges of the laws of war, broadly understood, in light of their theoretical, doctrinal, historical and political implications. Each one-hour event features a thought-provoking presentation by a leading scholar in the first half hour followed by a discussion in the second half hour. All events are held exclusively online from 6-7 pm CET.

Organized by Jochen von Bernstorff and Andreas Kulick