The function of Jus Post Bellum in international law

Abstract

This study focuses on legal and normative principles of the transition from armed conflict to peace, often called jus post bellum. Jus post bellum is a phrase frequently used without definition, or with little understanding that others may use the term to mean something else. It is almost never used with anything approaching a full exposition of the intellectual history upon which it is built. Before recent scholarship, the laws and principles that constitute the jus post bellum were rarely expounded. This study helps to consolidate a firmer theoretical grounding for the term, as well as a clearer intellectual history and analysis of its content. Jus post bellum remains comparatively under-theorized, and frequently referenced without realizing that many authors be talking past each other, meaning different things while using the same term. The author’s hope for the thesis is not only to help clarify the debate over the term, but also to move the consensus towards a hybrid functional approach to jus post bellum, that is, to define an approach to this area of law that focuses on the goal of achieving a just and sustainable peace rather than a mere discussion of law that applies during early peace.