Paul Boldron

  Faculty of Law | Bachelor European Law School

The falsehood of military necessity: a critical approach to international humanitarian law's accommodation of war

Paul's elevator pitch
Inspired by a geopolitical context in which the language of the law of armed conflict is used to justify wartime atrocities, this piece aims to understand the role of the principle of military necessity in shaping the law’s relationship with the practice of war. Applying critical legal theory insights, I determine that military necessity reifies war and makes it a material reality which must be accommodated by the law for the sole reason that it occurs. It becomes a necessity which the law may not call into question. My main argument is that this accommodation is a false necessity resulting from a process of preservation of states’ warmaking prerogatives. I argue that humanitarian law could reverse the balance and increase its protection of civilian populations by rethinking its relationship with war, both as a situation of reduced normativity and as a socio-legal construct.