Law of War and Neutrality Will SURPRISE Us All | P. Clancy and A. Skiljan

Originally published on Nov 22, 2024.
The International Criminal Court just proofed the point my two guests today made earlier this week: There is live in the old dog of International Law. Even though cynics say this law does not matter, the outrage in the US and Isreal as well as the celebrations around the globe show that the word of some judges and the verdicts of legal experts do carry weight. But what does that mean for the future of the "Rules Based Order", if the future is multipolar? Law and power will be up for grabs even more but that is not necessarily a bad thing as the 19th century has shown. After all, the "Concert System" lead to a flurry of international law making. Buckle up for some realist norm building ahead.

Today, I’ve got with me Amela Skiljan and Pearce Clancy. Amela is pursuing her phD on EU Arms Export Controls at the University of Bremen, in Germany. She holds an L.L.M. in European and International Law and is working with several international peace organisations, among others the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA), and the International Peace Bureau.

Pearce is an Irish Research Council PhD scholar at the Irish Centre for Human Rights and just finished his PhD thesis on Permanent Neutrality in International Law. Pearce also worked as a legal researcher for Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organisation based in the occupied West Bank.

Both of them were recently at my neutrality conference in Kyoto, in person and online. Today we want to look more closely at an often forgotten issue, namely that we still have a law of neutrality and that it applies even as we speak to the ongoing armed conflicts in Europe and the Middle East.