Most Interesting 2021: Krieger, Law-Making and Legitimacy in International Humanitarian Law

The second in our series "Most Interesting 2021":

Heike Krieger, Law-Making and Legitimacy in International Humanitarian Law (Edward Elgar Publishing 2021)

The changing nature of modern armed conflicts poses deep challenges to IHL, affecting compliance and the effectiveness of the regime. This observation permeates almost all discussions on IHL. But are compliance and effectiveness the only (and the best) lenses through which to assess the contemporary challenges of IHL and to question its status as a legal regime? This book brings to the foreground legitimacy as analytical lens to engage normatively with the contemporary challenges of IHL. This is indeed a novel and underexplored perspective on IHL that merits great attention.

The volume uses legitimacy as criterium to analyse law-making processes in IHL. Law-making is convincingly being understood in a broad sense, covering not only treaty-making but also involving judicial practice and the making of manuals on IHL. The volume explores a broad spectrum of processes and actors involved in IHL law-making processes, suggests a convincing framework for approaching current IHL developments, and at the same time also provides a new way to think about the potential and the limits of the IHL regime.

Rachele Marconi
Postdoctoral Research Fellow in International Law
University of Macerata
Visiting Fellow
Max Planck Institute of Comparative Public Law and International Law