Overview

Ten years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2011, Rethinking the Law of Armed Conflict in an Age of Terrorism, edited by Christopher Ford and Amichai Cohen, brings together a range of interdisciplinary experts to examine the problematic encounter between international law and challenges presented by conflicts between developed states and non-state actors, such as international terrorist groups. Through examinations of the counter-terrorist experiences of the United States, Israel, and Colombia-coupled with legal and historical analyses of trends in international humanitarian law-the authors place post-9/11 practice in the context of the international legal community's broader struggle over the substantive content of international rules constraining state behavior in irregular wars and explore trends in the development of these rules. From the beginning of international efforts to rewrite the laws of armed conflict in the 1970s, the legal rules to govern irregular conflicts of the state-on-nonstate variety have been contested terrain. Particularly in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, policymakers, lawyers, and scholars have debated the merits, relevance, and applicability of what are said to be competing war and law enforcement paradigms of legal constraint-and even the degree to which international law can be said to apply to counter-terrorist conflicts at all. Ford & Cohen's volume puts such debates in historical and analytical context, and offers readers an insight into where the law has been headed in the fraught years since September 2001. The contributors provide the reader with differing perspectives upon these questions, but together their analyses make clear that law-governed restraint remains a cardinal value in counter-terrorist war, even as the law stands revealed as being much more contested and indeterminate than many accounts would have it. Rethinking the Law of Armed Conflict in an Age of Terrorism provides an important conceptual framework through which to view the development of the law as the policy and legal communities move into the second decade of the global war on terrorism.

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Reviews

Ford and Cohen have gathered leading experts under 'one roof' examining anew armed conflict in the age of terrorism. The book's significance is in its successful illumination of how different countries confront similar issues. The comparative approach is extraordinarily important and this volume will make an important contribution for scholars and policy makers alike. -- Guiora, Amos N. Slowly--perhaps too slowly--we are beginning to appreciate that post-September 11 responses to the threat posed by international terrorism differ in neither kind nor degree as compared to prior societal responses to violent crises. In this volume, Ford and Cohen have amassed a series of insightful essays by a wide-ranging group of interdisciplinary experts that both embrace and further develop this insight. To that end, although the essays contained herein run the gamut of substantive counterterrorism policies, each offers different ways in which we might reorient debates about the role that law can and should play going forward. The longer that governments continue to claim extraordinary counterterrorism powers, the more it will behoove us (and them) to take these essays seriously, and to fight against the notion that liberty and security are a zero-sum game. -- Vladeck, Stephen I.

Ford and Cohen have gathered leading experts under 'one roof' examining anew armed conflict in the age of terrorism. The book's significance is in its successful illumination of how different countries confront similar issues. The comparative approach is extraordinarily important and this volume will make an important contribution for scholars and policy makers alike. -- Amos N. Guiora, University of Utah Slowly-perhaps too slowly-we are beginning to appreciate that post-September 11 responses to the threat posed by international terrorism differ in neither kind nor degree as compared to prior societal responses to violent crises. In this volume, Ford and Cohen have amassed a series of insightful essays by a wide-ranging group of interdisciplinary experts that both embrace and further develop this insight. To that end, although the essays contained herein run the gamut of substantive counterterrorism policies, each offers different ways in which we might reorient debates about the role that law can and should play going forward. The longer that governments continue to claim extraordinary counterterrorism powers, the more it will behoove us (and them) to take these essays seriously, and to fight against the notion that liberty and security are a zero-sum game. -- Stephen I. Vladeck, American University In this thoughtful and illuminating compilation, several of the most burning questions of national security are addressed from a wide variety of viewpoints. Anyone interested in contemporary dilemmas of regulating warfare and counterterrorism will find something in this book that would force them to rethink conventional wisdoms. -- Gabriella Blum, Harvard University

Ford and Cohen have gathered leading experts under 'one roof' examining anew armed conflict in the age of terrorism. The book's significance is in its successful illumination of how different countries confront similar issues. The comparative approach is extraordinarily important and this volume will make an important contribution for scholars and policy makers alike. --Amos N. Guiora, University of Utah -- Guiora, Amos N.

Author Information

Christopher Ford is senior fellow and Director of the Center for Technology and Global Security at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. Amichai Cohen is senior lecturer with the Faculty of Law at Ono Academic College in Israel. Contributors: Amichai Cohen; Steven David; Christopher Ford; Jeremy Rabkin; Juan Carlos Gomez Ramirez; Elizabeth Samson; Yuval Shany; John H. Shenefield; Ariel Zemach

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