What Is To Be Done About International War Crimes?

By Ian Steele Pulz

Ian Pulz is a 2021 Albany Law School graduate born and raised in New Jersey. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in 2016 and went on to receive his Master’s Degree in Conflict Studies in 2018.

Ian’s interests include immigration and criminal defense law as well as jurisprudence. He will be working as a public defender in Virginia, and he was just notified that he passed the Virginia bar exam! 

In his free time, Ian enjoys hiking, reading, and activism.

 If a crime occurs with no presiding coercive power to collectively enforce it, has a crime occurred? If a country passes legislation enabling any and “all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any person…who is being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court,” or if a country has dropped an average of twenty-two bombs on Syria and Iraq on September 21, the UN International Day of Peace, over the span of 2014-18, is it not reasonable to adopt a cynical approach to acts of war and the crimes that oftentimes accompany military conflict?

This paper will discuss the difficult concept of international war crimes. First, this paper will analyze the history of efforts to codify a standard system of law for war crimes. Second, this paper will shift to modern analysis of war crimes, drawing on sources such as President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, continental philosopher Immanuel Kant, and legal philosopher Hans Kelsen. A major focus in this paper is the legitimate implementation of standardized law for war crimes, and why that is so difficult.

Third, this paper will discuss the ineptitude of bodies such as the United Nations and the International Criminal Court. Lastly, this paper will discuss the continued practice of war racketeering, the historic blind eye that the International Criminal Court has turned toward this practice, the International Criminal Court’s racial disparity, and the importance of community in the context of war crimes.

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To read the paper, open HERE.