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LEGAL476-23A (HAM)
Laws of Armed Conflict and International Humanitarian Law
15 Points
Staff
Convenor(s)
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Claire Breen
6037
N.4.12
claire.breen@waikato.ac.nz
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Lecturer(s)
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Alexander Gillespie
6438
N.5.07
alexander.gillespie@waikato.ac.nz
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Librarian(s)
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What this paper is about
How this paper will be taught
This is an A Trimester paper. The teaching component comprises a 2 hour lecture every week. This is an asyncronous FLEXI paper. This means lectures will be live and in person (as much as circumstances permit) and also recorded.
1. Professor Gillespie's office hours are every Wednesday during term time, 1pm to 3pm. He is also available via email and zoom, within the normal hours of the working week.
2. Professor Breen's office hours every Tuesday from 11am to 1pm. She is also generally available by email and zoom (by appointment) between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday.
Required Readings
Weekly readings will be posted on Moodle (http://elearn.waikato.ac.nz), the University of Waikato’s online learning system. Any such material is provided on the following terms:
University of Waikato owns the intellectual property rights, including copyright, in and to this site, or has acquired the necessary licenses to display the material on the site. As a student of the Te Piringa - Faculty of Law, you are granted a limited license to use (access, display or print a single copy) the material from the papers in which you are enrolled for the purposes of participating in the paper only, provided the information is not modified. Materials may not under any circumstances be copied, stored, distributed or provided in any form or method whatsoever to any third party. Any other use of the material is prohibited. None of the material may be otherwise reproduced, reformatted, republished or re-disseminated in any manner or form without the prior written consent of University of Waikato. To obtain such consent, please contact the Te Piringa - Faculty of Law.
There is no single recommended text for this paper, but the Law Library holds a number of highly relevant textbooks on armed conflict and humanitarian law such as:
Detter, The Law of War (2016)
Dinstein, War, Aggression and Self-Defence (2017)
Dinstein, The Conduct of Hostilities under the Law of International Armed Conflict (2016)
Gillespie, A History of the Laws of War (2011); and Gillespie, A, the Causes of War, Volumes I to V. (Bloomsbury, London).
Solis, The Law of Armed Conflict (2016)
Sassoli and Bouvier, How Does the Law Protect in War (2014) available on line: https://casebook.icrc.org/
Yoram Dinstein Non-International Armed Conflicts in International Law (2021)
Introductory chapters to IHL can be found in International Law texts such as
Shaw, International Law (2017)
Brownlie, Principles of Public International Law, (8th ed, OUP, Oxford: 2012)
Harris, Cases and Materials on International Law, (7th ed, Thomson/Sweet & Maxwell, London: 2010)
Evans, International Law 5th ed (2018)
Abass International Law: Text Cases and Materials 2nd ed (OUP, Oxford: 2014)
Students should also be familiar with the library’s international law journals, e.g., Journal of conflict & security law, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, and the International Commission of Jurists’ Review. The International Review of the Red Cross (available on line) is particularly valuable.
Learning Outcomes
Students who successfully complete the course should be able to:
Assessments
How you will be assessed
The assessment for this paper is research based. All assessment components will allow students to strengthen their research skills developed during the course and develop particular expertise in given subject-matter areas. They are intended to examine whether students have understood the contextual constraints associated with international humanitarian law, gained sufficient knowledge of the laws, procedures and institutions, as well as the politics and philosophy; and thus make some critical analyse of the topics at hand.
Students will need to complete two pieces of assessment.
Mid-semester essay
The Mid-semester essay will be provided in class on 6 April. It is due on 2 May.
End-of-semester essay
The end-of-semester essay will be handed out in class on 18 May. It is due on 13 June. The word limit is 3,000 words including footnotes.
The internal assessment/exam ratio (as stated in the University Calendar) is 100:0. There is no final exam.