Article The Cost of Conflation: Preserving the Dualism of Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello in the Contemporary Law of War Robert D. Sloanet I. IN T RO D U CTIO N .............................................................................................................................. 4 8 II. THE HISTORY OF AN AXIOM: INDEPENDENCE OR INTERDEPENDENCE'? ...................................... 56 A. Evolution of the DualisticAxiom in Just War Theory ................................................ 57 1. Ancient and Medieval Origins: Interdependence ............................................ 57 2. The Scholastics: Can a War Be Just on Both Sides? ....................................... 59 3. NaturalLaw: The Birth of Secular Just War Doctrine................................... 60 4. Positivism: Just War as Positive Morality ........................................................ 61 B. Evolution of the DualisticAxiom in InternationalLaw .............................................. 63 1. War as a MetajuristicPhenomenon ................................................................. 63 2. From Bellum Justum to Bellum Legale ............................................................ 64 C. The Ad Bellum-In Bello Relationship in the CharterEra ............................................ 67 III. THE SOURCES AND LOGIC OF CONFLATION ................................................................................ 69 A. The Aggressor-Defender Model................................................................................... 70 B . Prop ortionality .................................................................................................................. 72 C. "Supreme Emergency ": ThresholdDeontology in IHL? ............................................ 76 IV . T HE C OST OF C ONFLATION ............................................................................................................ 79 A. Conflation and the ICI's Jurisprudenceof War .......................................................... 80 1. C orfu C hannel .................................................................................................. 80 2. N icaragua ....................................................................................................... 8 1 3. O il Platform s ..................................................................................................... 83 4 . A rm ed Activities ................................................................................................... 85 5 . T h e W all ................................................................................................................ 8 7 6. N uclear W eapons .............................................................................................90 7. Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 93 B. Conflation in State Practice......................................................................................... 93 1. Koso vo ...................................................................................................................9 3 2. The Thirty-FourDay War ................................................................................. 96 3. The Resurrection of Rationalized Torture .......................................................... 100 V. CONCLUSION: THE DUALISTIC AXIOM IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY .................................... 103 A . Preservationof the Axiom ............................................................................................... 104 B. ConcurrentApplication of Ad Bellum and In Bello Proportionality............................. 106 C . Excep tions to the A xiom ? ................................................................................................ 107 D. Clarifying Ad Bellum and In Bello Proportionality....................................................... 108 t Associate Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law. Thanks to Daniela Caruso, Tai-Heng Cheng, Kathleen Claussen, Anthony J. Colangelo, Lori Damrosch, Ryan Goodman, Bonnie Kent, Gary Lawson, David Luban, David Lyons, Jenny S. Martinez, William W. Park, W. Michael Reisman, Kenneth W. Simons, Jane Stromseth, Pierre-Hugues Verdier, Allen S. Weiner, Andrew Willard, and David Wippman. I acknowledge with gratitude the research assistance of Jennifer Klein and Cassie Crawford. THE YALE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW [Vol. 34: 47 The dualism ofjus ad bellum and jus in bello is at the heart of all that is most problematic in the moral reality of war. -Michael Walzer' [I]t may happen that neither of the Partiesin War acts unjustly. For no Man acts unjustly, but he who is conscious that what he does is unjust; and ignorant this is what many are2 of -Hugo Grotius I. INTRODUCTION On October 9, 2007, a trial chamber of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) sentenced two leaders of the Civil Defence Forces (CDF), one of the parties to Sierra Leone's civil war.3 The Chamber had convicted them of exceptionally brutal crimes: mutilation, amputation, hacking civilians to death with machetes, and other sadistic killings.4 Among relevant mitigating factors, however, it noted that the defendants had fought for "a legitimate cause": "to restore the democratically elected Government of President Kabbah." 5 It held that their sentences should therefore be mitigated significantly, for although their conduct transgressed "acceptable limits," they served a "cause that is palpably just and defendable": "facilitating the restoration of democracy, peace and security in [Sierra Leone]"-precisely the objective the Security Council sought to achieve by encouraging the SCSL's establishment. 6 Furthermore, the Chamber opined, absent mitigation, militias in future civil wars might not intervene on behalf of legitimate governments. Their members might fear that they, too, would be judged harshly after the 7 conflict. The SCSL Appeals Chamber emphatically disagreed, noting that the trial chamber's adoption of just cause as a mitigating factor violated "[t]he basic distinction and historical separation between jus ad bellum and jus in bello," which it accurately characterized as "a bedrock principle" of the law of war. 8 It also stressed that "[a]llowing mitigation for a convicted person's 1. MICHAEL WALZER, JUST AND UNJUST WARS 21 (1977); see also BRIAN OREND, WAR AND INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE: A KANTIAN PERSPECTIVE 50 (2000). 2. 2 HUGO GROTIUS, THE RIGHTS OF WAR AND PEACE 1130 (Richard Tuck ed., Liberty Fund 2005) (1625) (emphasis omitted). 3. Prosecutor v. Fofana & Kondewa, Case No. SCSL-04-14-T, Sentencing Judgement (Oct. 9, 2007). 4. Id. 46; see also id. 45-48, 52-54. In particular, the Trial Chamber convicted the defendants of violations of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, see, e.g., Geneva Convention (Ill) Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War art. 3, Aug. 12, 1949, 6 U.S.T. 3316, 75 U.N.T.S. 135 [hereinafter Geneva Convention Ill], and of Protocol Additional (II) to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts, adopted June 8, 1977, 1125 U.N.T.S. 609 [hereinafter Protocol 11]. 5. Prosecutor v. Fofana & Kondewa, Sentencing Judgement, 83. 6. Id. 86-88; see also S.C. Res. 1315, pmbl., U.N. Doc. S/RES/1315 (Aug. 14, 2000). 7. Prosecutor v. Fofana & Kondewa, Sentencing Judgement, 90-91. But cf David Luban, War Crimes: The Law of Hell, in WAR: ESSAYS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 266, 278 (Larry May ed., 2008) (arguing that "stripping belligerent immunity from rebels may deter surrender and protract civil wars"). 8. Prosecutor v. Fofana & Kondewa, Case No. SCSL-04-14-A, Judgement, 529-30 (May 28, 2008). 2009] The Cost of Conflation political motives, even where they are considered... meritorious .... provides implicit legitimacy to conduct that unequivocally violates the law- the precise conduct this Special Court was established to punish." 9 In short, for the trial chamber, mitigation based on the "just cause" for which the defendants fought promoted the SCSL's goals (and those of the law of war generally); for the Appeals Chamber, it undermined them. This case reflects, in microcosm, a pressing issue in the contemporary law of war. After 9/11, countless scholars and statesmen have called for changes in the jus ad bellum, the law governing resort to force, or the jus in bello, the law governing the conduct of hostilities. 10 These invitations to reform, whatever their merit, raise an equally vital but distinct legal issue that has been largely neglected in recent legal scholarship: the relationship between the traditional branches of the law of war.'" Since the U.N. Charter introduced a positive jus ad bellum into international law, the reigning dogma has been that reflected in the SCSL Appeals Chamber's opinion: the jus ad bellum and thejus in bello are, and must remain, analytically distinct. In bello rules and principles apply equally to all combatants, whatever each belligerent's avowed ad bellum rationale for resorting to force: self-defense, the restoration of democratic government, territorial conquest, or the destruction of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, as such. 12 It is immaterial, on this view, whether the ad bellum intent of the militia leaders indicted by the SCSL had been to restore a democratic government or to 9. Id. 534; accord Prosecutor v. Kordi6 & Cerkez, Case No. IT-95-14/2-A, Judgement, 1082 (Dec. 17, 2004) ("The unfortunate legacy