Course | Columbia Law School

The seminar will cover the law of war from the American Civil War to Bosnia and Rwanda, including traditional war crimes and humanitarian law and such modern developments as crimes of aggression and genocide and civil damages for violations of human rights in war or peace. We will cover the doctrine of "just war" in its medieval and modern guises, and trials from Andersonville and the Lakota Sioux to Eichmann, Calley and the current international trials in the Hague and Arusha. We also will examine the treaties on which these trials are based, including the Hague and Geneva conventions, and the continuing attempts to reform the law of war by treaty in such areas as guerrillas, land mines, aerial bombing, environmental warfare and gender crimes. The Nuremberg Trials (1945-49) marked the transition from the traditional to the modern law of war, and so the course will focus on Nuremberg, as well as other post-World War II trials in Europe and the Far East. The Nuremberg unit will focus not only on the legal responsibility of soldiers and their commanders, but also on the various sectors of the modern, industrialized nation at war: diplomats and other government officials, doctors, lawyers and judges, industrial leaders, and political and party officials. We conclude by focusing on the international court set up to punish war criminals and similar human rights violators in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, on the use of political and legal (both civil and criminal) tools in domestic courts against these offenders, on revitalized doctrines of restitution and reparations, and on alternative mechanisms for war crimes justice (truth commissions and political apologies).