Editorial: The Relationship between International Humanitarian Law and General International Law

Abstract

As one of the oldest substantive areas of regulation under international law, international humanitarian law (IHL) has played a prominent role in many of the key developments in international law. As public international law expanded, particularly in the latter part of the twentieth century, however, this role of IHL necessarily diminished, at least relative to other specialized regimes in international law. In addition, growing specialization has led to a certain isolation of IHL from public international law more generally. This special issue of the Journal of Conflict & Security Law examines this phenomenon and considers the relationship between IHL and general international law (understood as those rules of international law that apply across specialist regimes, such as rules on law creation, treaty interpretation and State responsibility). In considering how a range of general international law issues regarding sources, State responsibility and structural concepts such as State sovereignty arise in the specific field of IHL, a rich and complex relationship between IHL and general international law is revealed. The articles in this special issue demonstrate that this relationship varies considerably depending on the particular focus, from topics on which IHL and general international law diverge fundamentally to those in which IHL has played a key role in the development of certain general international law concepts.