The Francis Lieber Prize is awarded annually by the American Society of International Law’s Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict to the authors of publications which the judges consider to be outstanding in the field of law and armed conflict.  Both monographs and articles (including chapters in books of essays)  are eligible for consideration, as the prize is awarded to the best submission in each of these two categories.

Criteria:         Any work in the English language published during 2011 or whose publication is imminent at the time of submission may be nominated for this prize.  The re-submission of works which have already been considered for this prize is not allowed.  Entries may address such topics as the use of force in international law, the conduct of hostilities during international and non‑international armed conflicts, protected persons and objects under the law of armed conflict, the law of weapons, operational law, rules of engagement, occupation law, peace operations, counter‑terrorist operations, and humanitarian assistance.  Other topics bearing on the application of international law during armed conflict or other military operations are also appropriate.

Age Limit:       Competitors must be 35 years old or younger at the time of submission. They need not be members of the American Society of International Law.  Multi-authored works may be submitted if all the authors are eligible to enter the competition.  Should a multi-authored submission win the competition, the cash component of the prize shall be divided, pro rata, between the authors.  Submissions from outside the United States are welcome.

Submission:     Submissions, including a letter or message of nomination, must be received by 16 January 2012.  Three copies of books must be submitted.  The electronic submission of articles is encouraged.  Authors may submit their own work.  Any work not already published must be accompanied by documentation indicating that it has been accepted for publication.  All submissions must include contact data (e‑mail, fax, phone, address).  The Prize Committee will acknowledge receipt of the submission by e‑mail.

Printed submissions must be sent to: Professor Iain Scobbie, Department of Law, School of Oriental and African Studies, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London,   WC1H 0XG, United Kingdom

Electronic submissions must be sent to: is17{at}soas.ac.uk

Please indicate clearly in the subject line that the email concerns a submission for the Lieber Prize.

Prize:   The Selection Committee will select one submission for the award of the Francis Lieber Prize in the book category and one in the article category. The Prizes consist of $500, a certificate of recognition, and a year’s membership of the American Society of International Law.  The winner of the Lieber Prize in both categories will be announced at the American Society of International Law’s Annual Meeting in March 2012.

In 2011, the winners were:

Tom Ruys, of the Catholic University of Leuven, for his monograph “Armed attack and Article 51 of the UN Charter” (Cambridge UP: 2010)

Naz Modirzadeh, Associate Director of the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research, Harvard University, for her article “The dark sides of convergence: a pro-civilian critique of the extraterritorial application of human rights law in armed conflict”, 86 International Law Studies (US Naval War College) 349 (2010).

As the conflict in Libya appears to be drawing to a close, more allegations are surfacing that war crimes have been committed, and fears have been expressed that reprisals may occur.  The allegations made against the Qadhafi forces of torture and wilful killing (see here and here) are grave, but a Human Rights Watch report that alleges that Libyan dissident forces have unjustifiably damaged property, beaten individuals, and looted hospitals, homes and shops, is also disconcerting. 

These allegations are at odds with the declared policy of the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) which, on March 24 stated, in relation to the treatment of detainees and prisoners, that “its policies strictly adhere to the ‘Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War’ as well as with the ethical and moral values of the Libyan society”.  This statement continued:

“1.        Any Libyan caught whether they be military personnel or citizens recruited to cause sabotage and spread chaos, should not be titled as ‘Prisoner’ but as a Libyan brother (or sister) who has been deceived.

2.         All prisoners and detainees will be provided with food, water and necessary medical assistance and will be treated humanely, without the use of aggression in any form. The NTC will vow to punish those who violate this code and will allow local and international human rights organizations to freely visit and talk to the detainees and prisoners at any time.”

Further, on May 19 the NTC launched a frontline manual on the fundamental rules of armed conflict (see here for the Manual). This has been distributed in various forms, including sending extracts as text messages on mobile phones.  This manual was intended to demonstrate its commitment to do its best to ensure that its forces would adhere to the principles of international humanitarian law, and thus minimize harm to the Libyan people.  In its press release no.21 (which is not on its website), the NTC stated:

 “We recognise that many of those men and women who have taken up arms in opposition to the Qadhafi regime are not combatants who have been formerly trained in the laws of armed conflict. As such, these guidelines were requested in order to help instruct them, as rapidly as possible, in the fundamental rules which they must respect, in particular those relating to the humane treatment of detainees and to targeting in an armed conflict.”

Shortly after the outbreak of conflict in Libya, some expatriate lawyers established a group, Lawyers for Justice in Libya (LFJL) which has the aim of promoting human rights in Libya and, in particular, investigating and documenting possible crimes against humanity committed by the Qadhafi regime since 15 February 2011, and also human rights abuses committed since that regime came to power 42 years ago.

As the group organising Libyan dissident forces, the NTC did not want to “act like Qadhafi and his forces”, it asked LFJL to advise on the applicable rules of the law of armed conflict.  Through personal contacts, LFJL assembled a small group based in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, to draw up basic guidelines for use in the field. We were asked to focus on two areas: guidelines for the detention of captured Qadhafi forces, and guidelines on targeting. Our brief was to provide concise guidance which would set out basic legal standards with the aim of advising how the dissident forces could avoid breaching the law of armed conflict or, for that matter, expose themselves to liability under international criminal law.

Accordingly, these guidelines have two functions: to set out basic standards of behaviour, but also to provide standards of accountability. (more…)

From: Dr. Kathleen Cavanaugh, Senior Lecturer, Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland & Prof. Joshua Castellino, Professor of Law & Head of Law Department, Middlesex University, London, United Kingdom.

Over the last half a century the discourse of public international has been enlivened by a growing emphasis on international human rights law, spawning robust debate and discussion, and also the creation of an imperfect system of accountability for crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. In the last two decades in particular, the scholarship and activism of Professor William Schabas has had a significant impact on the growth and direction of the normative frameworks around these subjects. In addition through his own engagement in different theatres, Professor Schabas has also contributed to the spread of implementation models worldwide, and has supervised a growing number of successful doctoral contributions that have further enhanced the quality of the debate. His sterling role on the Sierra Leone Truth Commission is but one manifestation that that his contribution has spread well beyond the realms of the classroom: recognition that is also reflected in the bestowal of the Order of Canada upon him for his contribution to human rights.

On the occasion of his 60^th year, we are seeking contributions from scholars, practitioners, judges and others that critically engage with the published contributions of Professor William Schabas. We seek this in the belief that the best testament to a scholar is a critical engagement with their work. We therefore invite contributions of between 8,000 and 10,000 words, in English or French that critically assess the work and impact of Professor Schabas’ writing. The book is likely to be published by Cambridge University Press and will therefore adhere to the house style of that publisher, with further details provided with the invitation letter to those whose abstracts have been accepted. The range of topics that we anticipate include: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, the creation and functioning of the International Criminal Court, the death penalty, the concept of reservations to treaties, norms of jus cogens, minority rights, religion and human rights, truth commissions, reparative justice and  other topics including literature and human rights.

To be considered for publication we request interested authors submit a 500 word abstract, outlining the general thrust of their contribution and highlighting the aspect of Professor Schabas’ scholarship that will be engaged. This abstract should be sent to either of the two editors by the 1^st of October 2011. (more…)

Nominations may now be made for the Francis Lieber Prize, awarded annually to an outstanding published (or to be published) work in the field of law and armed conflict by an author aged 35 years or younger at the time of submission.

The Francis Lieber Prize is awarded annually by the American Society of International Law’s Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict to the author of an exceptional work in the field of law and armed conflict.

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Shabtai Rosenne, who died in Jerusalem on 21 September 2010 aged 93, was one of the last of the generation of distinguished international lawyers who studied before or during the early years of World War II.  I can only think of two remaining survivors in the English-speaking world—Benjamin Ferencz and Leslie Green.  This is a club which even Sir Eli Lauterpacht is far too young to join.  While Benjamin Ferencz and Leslie Green were both involved in war crimes trials after the war, Ferencz at Nuremberg and Green in India, Rosenne became instrumental in the legal construction of Israel.

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Professor Iain Scobbie, is the Sir Joseph Hotung Research Professor in Law, Human Rights and Peace Building in the Middle East, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

The burden of Professor Koskenniemi’s article appears to bear an uncanny likeness to St Teresa of Avila’s aphorism that answered prayers cause more tears than those that remain unanswered. His article is both a restatement and development of the concerns he addressed twenty years ago in “The Politics of International Law”, namely that law is inevitably indeterminate and must always defer to contested political assumptions (or discretion) in order to impose a decision and that, consequently, international lawyers must be reflective and take responsibility for their actions in both the practice and doctrinal development of the discipline. He has consistently argued that a failure to examine one’s actions contributes to the perpetuation of the problems that international law claims to alleviate. There is merit in this argument: as Colin Warbrick pointed out, a refusal to think about what one is doing may amount to a “latent theory” which rests content with the status quo and seeks neither to question nor justify either the substance or practice of international law (see Warbrick C, “The theory of international law: is there an English contribution?”, in Allott P et al, Theory and international law: an introduction (BIICL: London: 1991).

But to speak of the “discipline” of international law is perhaps to impose a falsely monolothic character on the enterprise. As Professor Koskenniemi argues, one of the characteristics of contemporary international legal practice is specialisation, where discrete sets of substantive issues are packaged into categories such as humans right law or trade law or environmental law, each of which have attendant specialised vocabularies that intellectually structure the possibilities and limits of the given field. Special regimes have thereby been created “that cater for special audiences with special interests and special ethos”. Each of these embody structural biases in the form of dominant expectations about the values, actors and solutions appropriate to that specialisation, which thus affect affect practical outcomes . These expectations differ from specialisation to specialisation. Participants conceptualise issues in ways which locate them within a particular specialisation in order to pull on the biases encoded within that specialisation. In doing so they highlight some elements of a situation while disregarding others. This act of classification is often seen as natural or neutral, rather that one which chooses between contested categories which emphasise conflicting values and thus determine the range of possible or permissible outcomes. Consequently international lawyers should examine the implications of their classification of an issue. Professor Koskenniemi agrees with David Kennedy’s observation that international lawyers often have recourse to using specialised vocabularies and institutions without reflecting on their effect in the real world, but continues that if his indeterminancy thesis is correct, then these vocabularies and institutions must themselves be sites of controversy and compromise. Thus an agreement on broad objectives may lead to disagreement on how these are to be achieved, and different political approaches may be adopted to the same given issue—“One needs to know whose understanding of ‘human rights’ or which notion of security ought to be preferred and, once that preference is fixed, what type of action will best support it”. This requires detachment–“strategic sensitivity and the pursuit of critical distance”—from the institution chosen and the objectives it pursues in order that one is not blinded by, but rather may apprehend, its particular structural bias.

Professor Koskenniemi’s indeterminacy thesis may be seen to have affinities with one of the principal strands of American legal realism, rule scepticism, which argued that uncertainty lies in the very formulation of rules, and thus judicial decisions cannot not lay claim to being simply the inexorable application of the law to the issue in question. (more…)