Just War or Just Peace?: Humanitarian Intervention and International Law (Oxford Monographs in International Law)

Rating:
Summary: tightly argued and complex ... riveting
Review: 'a tightly argued and complex presentation, with numbered, easily referenced topics in the style of a doctoral thesis (which it is). A more textured work [than Christine Gray's International Law and the Use of Force], it is arguably a more interesting read for an audience that does not already have at ready access the historical background or international law perspective to this difficult subject. It is also a more accessible work for students, and decidedly less dry and fragmented than many standard international law texts ... Dr Chesterman gives us a fairly riveting review of the history behind the modern rise of humanitarian intervention.' -Books-on-Law

Rating:
Summary: a tour de force
Review: 'Chesterman has written a tour de force that exposes the weaknesses of the arguments supporting a doctrine of unilateral humanitarian intervention in international society ... Chesterman rejects the claim that states have a legal right to act as vigilantes in support of Council resolutions, even if they believe that this is the only means to stop a genocide. The powerfully argued thesis of this scholarly work is that accepting this proposition in law is "a recipe for bad policy, bad law, and a bad international order".' -International Affairs

Rating:
Summary: Humanitarian intervention or inhumanitarian nonintervention?
Review: From the author: This book critically examines the right of humanitarian intervention, asserted most spectacularly by NATO during its 1999 air strikes over Kosovo. The UN Charter prohibits the unilateral use of force, but there have long been arguments that such a right might exist as an exception to this rule, or linked to the changing role of the Security Council. Through an analysis of these questions, the book puts NATO's action in Kosovo in its proper legal and historical perspective.