Dr Ciaran Burke, visiting lecturer at BSIS, has just published An Equitable Framework for Humanitarian Intervention with Hart Publishing. The book aims to resolve the dilemma regarding whether armed intervention as a response to gross human rights violations is ever legally justified without Security Council authorisation. Thus far, international lawyers have been caught between giving a negative answer on the basis of the UN Charter’s rules (‘positivists’), and a ‘turn to ethics’, declaring intervention legitimate on moral grounds, while eschewing legal analysis (‘moralists’). In this volume, a third solution is proposed. The idea is presented that many equitable principles may qualify as ‘general principles of law recognised by civilised nations’ – one of the three principal sources of international law (though a category that is often overlooked) – a conclusion based upon detailed research of both national legal systems and international law. These principles, having normative force in international law, are then used to craft an equitable framework for humanitarian intervention. It is argued that the dynamics of their operation allow them to interact with the Charter and customary law in order to fill gaps in the existing legal structure and soften the rigours of strict law in certain circumstances. It is posited that many of the moralists’ arguments are justified, albeit based upon firm legal principles rather than ethical theory. The equitable framework proposed is designed to provide an answer to the question of how humanitarian intervention may be integrated into the legal realm. Certainly, this will not mean an end to controversies regarding concrete cases of humanitarian intervention. However, it will enable the framing of such controversies in legal terms, rather than as a choice between the law and morality.
Burke is currently at the University of Passau, Germany.
http://www.hartpublishingusa.com/books/details.asp?isbn=9781849464048
His predecessor at BSIS, Nicole Roughan, has just published Authorities-Conflicts, Cooperation, and Transnational Legal Theory with Oxford University Press. In the book, Roughan argues that understanding authority in contemporary pluralist circumstances requires a new conception of relative authority, and a new theory of its legitimacy. The theory of relative authority treats the interdependence of authorities, and the relationships in which they are engaged, as critical to any assessment of their legitimacy. It offers a tool for evaluating inter-authority relationships prevalent in international, transnational, state and non-state constitutional practice, while suggesting significant revisions to the idea that law, in general or even by necessity, claims to have legitimate authority.
Roughan is currently Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore.
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199671410.do