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This book is the first targeted work in the legal literature that investigates environmental challenges in the aftermath of conflict. The volume brings together academics, policy-makers, and practitioners from different disciplines to clarify policies and practices of environmental protection and key legal considerations related to normative frameworks (e.g. international environmental law, international humanitarian law, transitional justice, and human rights), the treatment of substantive principles (e.g. proportionality under jus in bello and jus post bellum, environmental integrity), ‘shared responsibility’, and accountability mechanisms for environmental damage. By providing a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of environmental protection and natural resource management during the transition to peace, the volume reveals strong links between the peace-orientation of jus post bellum and environmental principles, such as intergenerational equity and precaution. There is a great deal of work to do to ensure greater protection of the environment before, during, and after conflict. It remains a challenge to align protection with the political interest of states, and the increasing involvement of non-state actors in armed conflict. This volume marks a starting point for an urgently needed space for states, international organizations, and civil society to discuss, and debate conflict and the environment. By engaging with the International Law Commission’s 2016 Draft Principles on the Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts, the volume adds clarity to the law and momentum to the development of the law in this important area.

Protection of the environment and natural resources is a key element in the transition from armed conflict to peace. Most academic studies have focused on classical peacetime or conflict situations. The United Nations Environmental Programme (‘UNEP’) qualified the environment as a ‘silent casualty’ of armed conflict. Exploring the protection of the environment in the aftermath of armed conflict and its relationship to sustainable peace is a relatively novel perspective. This chapter establishes the relationship between jus post bellum and environmental protection. It suggests that jus post bellum (1) provides a lens to view environmental protection as continuum throughout cycles of conflict or conflict transformations; (2) strengthens the argument that concerns of environmental protection are not set aside by armed conflict but relevant throughout conflict and its aftermath; (3) strengthens the case for due diligence of actors beyond armed conflict; and (4) allows a differentiated look at the treatment of harm and remedies.

Professor Ruti Teitel, author of Humanity's Law, is perhaps best known for her foundational work on the concept of transitional justice. She is a proven norm entrepreneur. Her development of the concept of transitional justice demonstrates her ability to detect progress for those victimized by atrocities. It also demonstrates her skill in developing responses to those atrocities. Transitional justice, as Teitel envisioned it, has an ambitious agenda as a ‘conception of justice associated with periods of political change, characterized by legal responses to confront the wrongdoings of repressive predecessor regimes’. That said, transitional justice in its original conception has a specific focus, limited by time and circumstance. Those limits are in part responsible for its success as a concept and practice.

This article argues that without an attempt to clarify the distinctions among transitional justice, jus post bellum and international criminal law, none of these concepts will reach its potential. If transitional justice is made so elastic as implicitly to absorb international criminal law and jus post bellum, this lessens the potential value of transitional justice as a discrete, focused practice. What role each concept can play depends in part on when one asks the question. Transitional Justice is particularly useful in consolidating a new, human-rights-centered regime. Jus post bellum applies throughout the transition to peace. International Criminal Law on principle takes an unchanging stance with respect to determining criminal culpability. The article provides an empirical analysis of the usage of each phrase and reviews the historical foundations of each term. It then proceeds to analyzes the dynamics of each concept, that is, how each idea operates in practice over time. The article concludes by applying the theoretical considerations in Parts II and III to a concrete example: analyzing how these concepts could have been applied to work together in recent Cambodian history. The opportunity cost of failing to accurately perceive and pursue the goals driving each of these concepts is immense, and can only be remedied by a clear-headed, objective analysis of the underlying purpose and potential of each concept.

The successful transition from armed conflict to peace is one of the greatest challenges of contemporary warfare. It raises moral, legal, and practical problems that are the focus of intense interest across disciplines. The laws and norms of justice that apply to the process of ending war and building peace, or “jus post bellum,” is a central and growing concern. Definitions of the concept diverge, raising several unanswered questions that give rise to skepticism over the concept. This chapter traces different conceptions and definitions of jus post bellum currently shaping jus post bellum scholarship and practice. It attempts to provide a snapshot of current multi-disciplinary approaches to jus post bellum and clarify the current debate.

This chapter contrasts Transitional Justice and jus post bellum in order to create a clearer definition and understanding of each. The terms are evaluated not as essentialist truths but as terms that have evolved and will continue to change. The chapter begins with a review of Hersch Lauterpacht’s concept of the Grotian Tradition, and how it relates to Transitional Justice and jus post bellum. Jus post bellum and Transitional Justice are then contrasted and analyzed with respect to their varied legal or political emphases, their content, their geographical scope, their contrasting historical foundations, and their current usage. The chapter seeks to clarify where the extensive literature and experience regarding Transitional Justice is more or less likely to be helpful to those interested in jus post bellum. Additionally, the author hopes that the concept of jus post bellum may help those interested in Transitional Justice to refocus and strengthen their field.

This Article proposes to contrast “Transitional Justice” and “jus post bellum” in order to create a clearer definition and understanding of each. The Article reviews the terms not as essentialist truths but as terms that have evolved and may continue to change. The article begins with a review of Hersch Lauterpacht’s concept of the Grotian Tradition, and how it relates to Transitional Justice and jus post bellum. Jus post bellum and Transitional Justice are then contrasted and analyzed with a particular emphasis on the substantive focus, temporal aspects, geographical scope, the legal or political emphasis, historical foundations, and current usage. As a researcher on the subject of “jus post bellum,” the author’s primary concern is to clarify where the extensive literature and experience regarding Transitional Justice is more or less likely to be helpful to those interested in “jus post bellum.” Secondarily, the author hopes that the concept of “jus post bellum” may help those primarily interested in Transitional Justice to refocus and strengthen their field.