Lex Pacificatoria, Jus Post Bellum, or Just “Good Practice”?

Abstract

At the international level, getting into an armed conflict is clearly easier than getting out of one. Resolving the underlying issues that led to the conflict in the first place—and that have likely been exacerbated during the fighting— almost always proves profoundly difficult. While those issues are unlikely to be primarily “legal” in nature, international law and international lawyers should and do play important roles both in crafting interim arrangements to bring the fighting to an end and in establishing the conditions for a sustainable peace between the contesting parties. Against the backdrop of the continuing conflict in Ukraine (among other crises), it is worth asking what law, if any, applies to such efforts, whether there are any clear legal requirements or parameters for such agreements, and what the lawyers involved in the negotiations need to focus on. These are not new questions, of course, and since each conflict has its own unique origins, contours, and context, it is unrealistic to expect simple (much less uniform) answers. The two volumes under review address the issues from differing perspectives and offer practical insights into how international lawyers can play positive roles in constructing a durable post-conflict peace. In so doing they also illuminate doctrinal debates over recent developments in the evolution of international law.