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The True Meaning of Force

Part of: The True Meaning of Force

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Mary Ellen O’Connell
Mary Ellen O’Connell*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
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Tom Ruys’s article in the latest issue of the American Journal of International Law is an erudite study of the prohibition on the use of force in UN Charter Article 2(4). Ruys makes many points with which I wholeheartedly agree. In note 241, he says that the case for cross-border drone attacks by the United States “verges on stretching criteria for necessity, proportionality, and armed attack to the point of absurdity . . . .” He is also right to reject emerging claims that the defense of necessity provides a basis for the lawful resort to force. Indeed, there is much that is truly excellent about the article—just not, unfortunately, its central thesis.

Type
Symposium: The True Meaning of Force
Information
AJIL Unbound , Volume 108 , 2014 , pp. 141 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 2014

References

1 Ruys, Tom, The Meaning of “Force” and the Boundaries of the Jus Ad Bellum: Are “Minimal Uses of Force Excluded From UN Charter Article 2(4)? , 108 AJIL 159 (2014)Google Scholar.

2 Id. at 159.

3 Id. at 207.

4 Id. at 181.

5 Id.

6 Id.

7 Id. at 185.

8 Id. at 169.

9 Lederman, Marty, The Legal Basis for the Abu Khattalah Capture, Just Security (June 19, 2014)Google Scholar.

10 See Ruys, supra note 1, at 171.

11 International Law Association: Use of Force Committee, Final Report on the Meaning of Armed Conflict in International Law (2010).