Will Human Rights Tame War or Will War Corrupt Human Rights?: Guglielmo Verdirame
Channel: Cambridge Law Faculty
Date: 28/10/2013

The Lauterpacht Centre for International Law (LCIL), University of Cambridge hosts a regular Friday lunchtime lecture series on key areas of International Law. Previous subjects have included UN peacekeeping operations, the advisory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, the crime of agression, whaling, children and military tribunals, and theories and practices for proving individual responsibility criminal responsibility for genocide and crimes against humanity. 

This lecture, entitled 'The Devil and the Holy Water: Will Human Rights Tame War or Will War Corrupt Human Rights?', was delivered at the Lauterpacht Centre on Friday 25 October 2013 by Professor Guglielmo Verdirame, Professor of International Law at the Department of War Studies and the Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London. 

Abstract: Few would nowadays question that, as a matter of positive law, human rights law applies to armed conflict. Once confined to human rights courts, this principle is now settled in the jurisprudence of a wide range of international and domestic courts. Law of armed conflict specialists however remain concerned about the suitability of human rights law to regulate war. Furthermore -- and perhaps even more crucially -- the application of human rights law to war entails a radical, although often unnoted, change in the relationship between law and war. Can human rights regulate war? Are we sure that this development is an example of moral and legal progress?

For more information about the series, please see the LCIL website at www.lcil.cam.ac.uk