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9 - The Use of Force

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2025

By
Agatha Verdebout
General editor
Randall Lesaffer
Edited by
Robert Kolb  and
Momchil Milanov
Randall Lesaffer
Affiliation:
KU Leuven and Tilburg University
Robert Kolb
Affiliation:
Université de Genève
Momchil Milanov
Affiliation:
International Court of Justice
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Summary

From the Covenant of the League of Nations (1919) to the Kellogg–Briand Pact (1928), the interwar years were punctuated by efforts to codify the right of states to resort to armed force. It is often said that the Covenant and the pact prohibited war while leaving recourse to measures short of war unregulated. This account eludes the heated debates that animated interwar scholarship regarding the scope of the prohibition of the use of force contained in these two instruments. Doctrine was, in fact, split: a (smaller) part claimed that armed reprisals were not forbidden, while another (larger) faction asserted that they were. Likewise, states had different understandings of their obligations not to ‘resort to war’ under the Covenant and the pact. This chapter uses these debates as a thread to give an overview of interwar jus ad bellum.

Keywords

use of forceKellogg–Briand Pactmeasures short of warCovenant of the LeagueCorfu incident
Type
Chapter
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The Cambridge History of International Law , pp. 257 - 288
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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References

Further Reading

Borchard, Edwin, ‘The multilateral treaty for the renunciation of war’, American Journal of International Law, 23 (1929) 116–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Eagleton, Clyde, ‘The attempt to define war’, International Conciliation, 15 (1932–1933) 237–92.Google Scholar
Elbe, Joachim von, ‘The evolution of the concept of war in international law’, American Journal of International Law, 33 (1939) 665–88.Google Scholar
Fenwick, Charles G., ‘War as an instrument of national policy’, American Journal of International Law, 22 (1928) 826–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hathaway, Oona, and Shapiro, Scott, The Internationalists. How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World (New York: Simon & Schuster 2017).Google Scholar
Kaufmann, Erich, ‘Règles générales du droit de la paix’, Recueil des cours, 54 (1936) 307–620.Google Scholar
Kelsen, Hans, Legal Technique in International Law. A Textual Critique of the League of Nations (Geneva: Geneva Research Centre 1939).Google Scholar
Kolb, Robert, ‘La légitime défense et les États du XIXe siècle et pendant l’époque de la Société des Nations’ in Kolb, Robert (ed.), Commentaire sur le Pacte de la Société des Nations (Brussells: Bruylant 2014) 1299–1330.Google Scholar
Lauterpacht, Hersch, ‘“Resort to war” and the interpretation of the Covenant during the Manchurian dispute’, American Journal of International Law, 28 (1934) 43–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lesaffer, Randall, ‘Too much history: from war as a sanction to the sanctioning of war’ in Weller, Marc (ed.), The Oxford Handbook on the Use of Force in International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2015) 35–55.Google Scholar
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Verdebout, Agatha, ‘Article 10’ in Kolb, Robert (ed.), Commentaire sur le Pacte de la Société des Nations (Brussels: Bruylant 2014), 425–46.Google Scholar
Verdebout, Agatha, Rewriting Histories of the Use of Force. The Narrative of Indifference (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2021).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quincy, Wright, ‘The meaning of the Pact of Paris’, American Journal of International Law, 27 (1933) 39–61.Google Scholar
Wright, Quincy, ‘The Outlawry of War’, American Journal of International Law, 19 (1925) 76–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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