Description
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC The Law Against War: The Prohibition on the Use of Force in Contemporary International Law by Olivier Corten Foreword by Judge Bruno Simma
The Law Against War is a translated and updated version of a book published in 2008 in French (Le droit contre la guerre Pedone). The aim of this book is to study the prohibition of the use of armed force in contemporary positive international law. The argument in this book is that while marked changes have been observed in the development of the law since the 1990s the legal regime laid down by the UN Charter remains founded on a genuine jus contra bellum and not on the jus ad bellum that characterised earlier periods. The law against war as in the title of this book is a literal rendering of the familiar Latin expression and at the same time it conveys the spirit of a rule that remains without a doubt one of the cornerstones of public international law.From the Foreword by Bruno SimmaCortens book is weighty not just by its size but above all through the depth and comprehensiveness with which it analyzes the entirety of what the author calls the law against war the jus contra bellum. Corten tackles his immense task with a combination of methodical rigour applying modern positivism and abstaining from constructions of a lex ferenda and great sensibility for the political context and the ensuing possibilities and limitations of the legal regulation of forcewell worth reading to understand what the modern positivist method is to evaluate its usefulness to the international lawyer and to gain a better understanding of French perspectives on international law.Martin A. RogoffAmerican Journal of International Law