LAW 827 International Humanitarian Law
This course will focus on the evolution of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and the development of a responsive judicial system over the past two centuries. It will begin with a brief look at the history of war crimes and the laws of armed conflict going back to antiquity, and then concentrate on the beginning of the development of the legal and judicial underpinnings of IHL in the second half of the 19th century. It will then discuss the background and history of the early Geneva Conventions, the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conferences and resulting conventions, and the efforts by the international community to deal judicially with the war crimes committed during World War I. It will also explore the allies' more successful efforts to bring to justice perpetrators of the massive war crimes committed during World War II through the Nuremberg and Tokyo International Military trials as well as the thousands of military commission and national trials throughout Europe and Asia. It will also look at the background and history of the Genocide Convention, the postwar Geneva Conventions as well as the crimes and trials before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, the Extraordinary Chambers before the Courts of Cambodia, and the U.S. Military Commission trials in Guantanamo. It will also explore questions about cultural genocide and other legal concepts and precedents that have developed in relation to modern unconventional warfare.