Episode 6 – Monica Hakimi on the Informal Regulation of Jus ad Bellum

In this episode, I speak with  Monica Hakimi, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. We discuss a recent article of hers in which she argues that the manner in which the U.N. Security Council tacitly endorses or supports the use of force by states that would otherwise be unlawful, must be understood as forming an “informal regulation” that is part of the jus ad bellum regime. She argues that this is not only true as a descriptive matter, but that as a normative matter we should embrace this as helping to strengthen the jus ad bellum regime. We debate some of these normative implications, and the extent to which such an informal regulation is consistent with different conceptions of the rule of law – which leads us into another recent chapter of hers on the value of state-level argument about the jus ad bellum. a fascinating discussion all round!

Materials:

– “The Jus ad Bellum‘s Regulatory Form,” 112 American J. Int’l L. 151 (2018).

Symposium on Monica Hakimi, “The Jus ad Bellum‘s Regulatory Form,” 112 AJIL Unbound (2018).

Reading Recommendations:

– Tom Ruys et al., The Use of Force in International Law: A Case-Based Approach (2018).

– Michael Reisman, The Quest for World Order and Human Dignity in the Twenty-First Century (2013).

– Don Herzog, Sovereignty, RIP (2020).