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High Altitude Legality: Visuality and Jurisdiction in the Adjudication of NATO Air Strikes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2019

Christiane Wilke
Christiane Wilke*
Affiliation:
Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University, [email protected]
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Abstract

Air strikes are the signature modality of violence used by NATO militaries. When civilian victims of NATO air strikes have turned to courts in NATO countries, they have generally not been successful. What are the legal techniques and legal knowledges deployed in Western courts that render Western aerial violence legal or extralegal? The article analyzes the responses by European courts to two sets of NATO bombings: the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia and a September 2009 air strike near Kunduz, Afghanistan. The judgments rely on two forms of “legal technicalities”: the drawing of jurisdictional boundaries that exclude the airspace taken up by the bombers and the ground on which victims stood when they were killed as well as particular visual regimes that facilitate not seeing people on the ground as civilians.

Résumé

Les frappes aériennes constituent la modalité de violence de prédilection utilisée par les forces armées de l’OTAN. Lorsque les victimes civiles de ces frappes aériennes se sont adressées aux tribunaux des pays membres de l’OTAN, elles n’ont généralement pas obtenu gain de cause. Quelles sont les techniques et les savoirs juridiques déployés dans les tribunaux occidentaux qui ont pour effet de rendre les violences aériennes occidentales légales ou extralégales? En réponse à cette question, le présent article analyse les réponses des tribunaux européens à l’endroit de deux séries de bombardements ordonnés par l’OTAN: le bombardement de la Yougoslavie en 1999 et une frappe aérienne près de Kunduz en Afghanistan réalisée en septembre 2009. Les jugements reposent sur deux formes de « technicalités juridiques ». La première est relative à la définition de limites juridictionnelles qui excluent l’espace aérien repris par les bombardiers et le terrain sur lequel se trouvaient les victimes lorsqu’elles furent tuées. La seconde est, quant à elle, reliée aux régimes visuels particuliers ayant permis d’interpréter la présence de personnes sur le terrain comme n’étant pas des civils.

Keywords

international humanitarian lawciviliansarmed conflictjurisdictionvisualityvisibilitytechnologiesdroit international humanitairecivilconflits armésjuridictionvisualitévisibilitétechnologies
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 34 , Special Issue 2: Vers une déstabilisation du sensorium du droit: Étude de la jurisprudence des sens / Troubling Law’s Sensorium: Explorations in Sensational Jurisprudence , August 2019 , pp. 261 - 280
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association / Association Canadienne Droit et Société 2019 

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Footnotes

*

Prior versions have been presented at the Law and Society Association Conference in Toronto as well as the Greifswald University Political Theory Research Colloquium. The author would like to thank the engaged audiences at both events as well as the editors and anonymous reviewers for the Canadian Journal of Law and Society for their comments and suggestions. Research for this article was supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (Canada) grant “Law and the Regulation of the Senses: Explorations in Sensori-Legal Studies.” Special thanks to Safiyah Rochelle for reading and commenting on a draft and to Michael Rothberg for facilitating extraterritorial PDF access.

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89 ECtHR, Banković v. Belgium, para 52.

90 ECtHR, Banković v. Belgium, para 36.

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93 ECtHR, Banković v. Belgium, para 59.

94 ECtHR, Banković v. Belgium, para 67.

95 ECtHR, Banković v. Belgium, para 71.

96 ECtHR, Banković v. Belgium, para 74.

97 ECtHR, Banković v. Belgium, para 80.

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104 Generalbundesanwalt, Einstellungsvermerk.

105 VG Köln, Judgment.

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107 Generalbundesanwalt, Einstellungsvermerk.

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110 BGH, III ZR 140/15, para 42.

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118 See Fischer-Lescano and Kommer, “Entschädigung,” 159.

119 Generalbundesanwalt, Einstellungsvermerk, 29.

120 Kolanoski, “Undoing the Legal Capacities.”

121 The video is available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/DfrErSvy7U8 (accessed 22 February 2019).

122 Kolanoski, “Undoing the Legal Capacities,” 378.

123 Eyal Weizman, “Violence at the Threshold of Detectability,” e-flux Journal #64 (2015): 1–14, 5. <http://worker01.e-flux.com/pdf/article_8998134.pdf>

124 LG, Bonn, Az. 1 O 460/11, para 71.

125 Kolanoski, “Undoing the Legal Capacities,” 392.

126 Kolanoski, “Undoing the Legal Capacities,” 387.

127 OLG Köln, Az. 7 U 4/14, para 78.

128 Pugliese, “Asymmetries of Terror,” para 8.

129 Butler, “Endangered/Endangering,” 205.

130 BGH III ZR 140/15, para 52.

131 Generalbundesanwalt, Einstellungsvermerk, 33.

132 Fischer-Lescano and Kommer, “Entschädigung,” 166.

133 Kolanoski, “Undoing the Legal Capacity,” 382.

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137 Mann, “Maritime Black Holes,” 2.

138 See Johns, Non-Legality in International Law.

139 Valverde, “Jurisdiction and Scale,” 144.