Belligerent Reprisals from Enforcement to Reciprocity
A New Theory of Retaliation in Conflict

This book aligns the legal theory of belligerent reprisals with the dynamics that govern retaliation during armed conflict.

Francesco Romani (Author)

9781108831840, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 December 2024

370 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.5 cm, 0.68 kg

This book challenges the traditional understanding of belligerent reprisals as a mechanism aimed at enforcing the laws of armed conflict. By re-instating reciprocity at the core of belligerent reprisals, it construes them as tools designed to re-calibrate the legal relationship between parties to armed conflict and pursue the belligerents' equality of rights and obligations in both a formal and a substantive sense. It combines an inquiry into the conceptual issues surrounding the notion of belligerent reprisals, with an analysis of State and international practice on their purpose and function. Encompassing international and non-international armed conflicts, it provides a first comprehensive account of the role of reprisals in governing legal interaction during wartime, and offers new grounds to address questions on their applicability, lawfulness, regulation, and desirability. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Introduction
1. Reciprocity and countermeasures: competing paradigms to understand belligerent reprisals
2. The development of belligerent reprisals as an enforcement tool
3. The resilience of the reciprocity paradigm
4. Belligerent reprisals in International armed conflict: a case-study in chemical attacks and the 'war of the cities' during the Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988)
5. Belligerent reprisals in Non-international armed conflict: conceptual issues
6. Belligerent reprisals in Non-International armed conflict: a quest for equilibrium
Conclusion: the implications of the new formalization of belligerent reprisals
Appendix
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: International humanitarian law [LBBS]