The law of neutrality - the corpus of legal rules regulating the relationship between belligerents and States taking no part in hostilities - assumed its modern form in a world in which the waging of war was unconstrained. The neutral State enjoyed territorial inviolability to the extent that it adhered to the obligations attaching to its neutral status and thus the law of neutrality provided spatial parameters for the conduct of hostilities. Yet the basis on which the law of neutrality developed - the extra-legal character of war - no longer exists. Does the law of neutrality continue to survive in the modern era? If so, how has it been modified by the profound changes in the law on the use of force and the law of armed conflict? This book argues that neutrality endures as a key concept of the law of armed conflict. The interaction between belligerent and nonbelligerent States continues to require legal regulation, as demonstrated by a number of recent conflicts, including the Iraq War of 2003 and the Mavi Marmara incident of 2010. By detailing the rights and duties of neutral states and demonstrating how the rules of neutrality continue to apply in modern day conflicts, this restatement of law of neutrality will be a useful guide to legal academics working on the law of armed conflict, the law on the use of force, and the history of international law, as well as for government and military lawyers seeking comprehensive guidance in this difficult area of the law.

Neutrality is a legal relationship between a belligerent State and a State not participating in a war, namely a neutral State. The law of neutrality is a body of rules and principles that regulates the legal relations of neutrality. The law of neutrality obliges neutral States to treat all belligerent States impartially and to abstain from providing military and other assistance to belligerents. The law of neutrality is a branch of international law that developed in the nineteenth century, when international law allowed unlimited freedom of sovereign States to resort to war. Thus, there has been much debate as to whether such a branch of law remains valid in modern international law, which generally prohibits war and the use of force by States. While there has been much debate regarding the current status of neutrality in modern international law, there is a general agreement among scholars as to the basic features of the traditional law of neutrality. Wani challenges the conventional understanding of the traditional neutrality by re-examining the historical development of the law of neutrality from the sixteenth century to 1945. The modification of the conventional understanding will provide a fundamentally new framework for discussing the current status of neutrality in modern international law.

Now available as an ebook for the first time, this 2000 title in the Melland Schill Studies in International Law series is a survey of the history of law of neutrality from its mediaeval roots to the end of the twentieth century. The theme is the eternal clash between the rights of neutrals and belligerents - between the right of belligerents to defeat their enemies, and the right of neutrals to trade freely with all parties. Over the centuries, belligerent powers have devised various legal means of restricting neutrals from trading with their enemies, such as the law of blockade and contraband carriage. At the same time, neutral traders have done their best to evade and circumvent these restrictions. This book traces the evolution of state practice, together with the debates over the relevant doctrinal issues and the various attempts to reform and codify the law of neutrality.

This book offers the most authoritative commentary and analysis of international humanitarian law applicable in armed conflict available. It is based upon the Joint Service Regulation for the German Ministry of Defence, augmented with extensive international references, and accompanied bycommentary by a team of distinguished and internationally renowned experts. Whilst the past decades have seen consistent development of international law applicable in armed conflict, culminating in a series of International Covenants and Protocols, world events in recent years have made reassessment of the law both a timely and topical concern. This Handbook available for the first time in paperback will serve as an indispensable reference source for practising lawyers and academics working in the field of international humanitarian law and for military personnel worldwide.

In A Scrap of Paper, Isabel V. Hull compares wartime decision making in Germany, Great Britain, and France, weighing the impact of legal considerations in each. She demonstrates how differences in state structures and legal traditions shaped the way the three belligerents fought the war. Hull focuses on seven cases: Belgian neutrality, the land war in the west, the occupation of enemy territory, the blockade, unrestricted submarine warfare, the introduction of new weaponry, and reprisals. A Scrap of Paper reconstructs the debates over military decision-making and clarifies the role law played—where it constrained action, where it was manipulated, where it was ignored, and how it developed in combat—in each case. A Scrap of Paper is a passionate defense of the role that the law must play to govern interstate relations in both peace and war.

This book presents the legal and political factors determining international relations, including the processes of integration in all their complexity. The overall structure of the book, together with the composition of its separate chapters, allows for some general assumptions, identifying the main tendencies and placing them in a contemporary social context as well as establishing their relations with the practices of today. The content is a compendium of basic information and data related to the international processes which occur within specific formal, legal and political frames. The book is divided into five parts featuring not only deep historical context but most of all presenting current information and analyses of the last few years. Presented against the background and within the context of the Kingdom of Sweden’s political system and its international environment, the book brings into the foreground issues of particular importance for Sweden’s continuing European integration process and describes its response to the developments in the international situation.