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Is Humanitarian Intervention Legal? The Rule of Law in an Incoherent World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2011

Ian Hurd
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Abstract

The paper asks whether humanitarian intervention is legal and reviews contemporary legal arguments on both sides. It finds that both views are sustainable by conventional accounts of the sources of international law; humanitarian intervention is at once legal and illegal. The paper then considers the implications of this for the idea of the rule of law in world politics. The power of international law in this case comes from its utility as a resource for justifying state policies, not as a means for distinguishing compliance from non-compliance. Law remains important to world politics, but in a different way than usually understood.

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Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , Fall 2011 , pp. 293 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2011

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References

NOTES

1 For these debates, see, e.g., Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, The UN Security Council and the Responsibility to Protect: Policy, Process, and Practice (Vienna: Favorita Papers 01/2010); Wheeler, Nicholas J., Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; and Holzgrefe, J. L. and Keohane, Robert O., eds., Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical, Legal, and Political Dilemmas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 See Johnson, James Turner, Ideology, Reason, and the Limitation of War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Clark, Ian, Legitimacy in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; and Gray, Christine D., International Law and the Use of Force, 3rd. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

3 See, e.g., Jolly, Richard, Emmerij, Louis, and Weiss, Thomas G., UN Ideas That Changed the World (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

4 Controversy over whether the Council is correctly identifying such threats is common—for instance, with respect to the Libyan sanctions in the 1990s. See Martenczuk, B., “The Security Council, the International Court and Judicial Review: What Lessons from Lockerbie?” European Journal of International Law 10, no. 3 (1999), pp. 517–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Gray, International Law and the Use of Force.

6 “Productive” here is used in the sense used by Barnett, Michael N. and Duvall, Raymond, eds., Power in Global Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

7 United Nations Security Council Resolution 487.

8 These words first appear in a letter from Daniel Webster to Lord Ashburton, August 6, 1842; avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/br-1842d.asp#web2; accessed November 18, 2010.

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10 See International Court of Justice, Nicaragua Merits, ICJ Reports, June 27, 1986, 94, para. 176.

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26 Glennon, Michael, “The Fog of Law: Self-Defense, Inherence, and Incoherence in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter,” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 25 (2002), pp. 539–58Google Scholar, at 539. See also Glennon, Michael, “How International Rules Die,” Georgetown Law Journal 93 (2005), p. 939Google Scholar.

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28 In the United States, see Poe v. Ullman at the U.S. Supreme Court (1961), and Committee on Legal Ethics v. Prinz in the West Virginia Supreme Court, 1992.

29 The argument may be logically sound, but it is empirically weak since it ignores a vast universe of state practice that contradicts it. Most state behavior upholds and reinforces the ban on war, and all of this is evidence against the argument of desuetude.

30 Smith, Michael J., “Humanitarian Intervention: An Overview of the Ethical Issues,” Ethics & International Affairs 12 (1998), pp. 63–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 66.

31 Weiss, Thomas G. and Thakur, Ramesh, Global Governance and the UN: An Unfinished Journey (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; see also the essays in Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, The UN Security Council and the Responsibility to Protect.

32 Kofi Annan, cited in Weiss and Thakur, Global Governance and the UN, p. 318.

33 “2005 World Summit Outcome: Fact Sheet”; www.un.org/summit2005/presskit/fact_sheet.pdf; accessed January 10, 2011.

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35 As defined by Adler, Emanuel and Pouliot, Vincent, The Practice Turn in International Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

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39 Tesón, Fernando R., “The Liberal Case for Humanitarian Intervention,” in Holzgrefe, J. L. and Keohane, Robert O., eds., Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical, Legal, and Political Dilemmas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 UN General Assembly, “An Agenda for Peace,” Report of the Secretary-General, A/47/277, June 17, 1992.

41 Evans, Gareth and Sahnoun, Mohamed, “The Responsibility to Protect,” Foreign Affairs 81, no. 6 (2002), pp. 99–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 102.

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43 Ibid., pp. 1–2.

44 Koh, Harold Hongju, “Why Do Nations Obey International Law?” Yale Law Journal 106, no. 8 (1997), pp. 2599–2659CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hathaway, Oona, “Do Human Rights Treaties Make a Difference,” Yale Law Journal 111, no. 3 (2002), pp. 1935–2042CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kelley, Judith, “Who Keeps International Commitments and Why? The International Criminal Court and Bilateral Non-Surrender Agreements,” American Political Science Review 101, no. 3 (2007), pp. 573–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Emilie Hafner-Burton, Jon Pevehouse, and Jana von Stein, “Human Rights Institutions, Membership, and Compliance” (paper presented at the American Political Science Association annual meetings 2009).

45 Kelley, “Who Keeps International Commitments and Why?”

46 Howse, Robert and Teitel, Ruti, “Beyond Compliance: Rethinking Why International Law Matters,” Global Policy 1, no. 2 (2010), pp. 127–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Exceptions exist, including the interesting case of the “waiver of illegality” position discussed above. This position, common on Kosovo, reveals an underlying prioritization among laws, obligations, and interests that is unconventional: proponents are suggesting that states should obey their international obligations only as long as these obligations are consistent with deeply held norms and interests and when they conflict, compliance is not required (or expected, or desired).

48 See the discussion in Brunnée, Jutta and Toope, Stephen J., Legitimacy and Legality in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.