The Law of Armed Conflict

Gary D. Solis is a retired Professor of Law of the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he headed the law of war program. He received Phi Kappa Phi's distinguished teaching award and, in 2006, the Apgar Award as the Military Academy's outstanding instructor. He is a retired U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel, holds a Ph.D. in the law of war from The London School of Economics & Political Science, and is currently an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. Solis is the author of Marines and Military Law in Vietnam and Son Thang: An American War Crime.

Part I. Foundation: 1. Rules of war, laws of war; 2. Codes, conventions, declarations and regulations; 3. Two world wars and their law of armed conflict results; 4. Protocols and politics; Part II. A Framework: 5. Conflict status; 6. Individual battlefield status; 7. LOAC's four core principles; 8. What is a 'war crime'?; Part III. Battlefield Issues: 9. Obedience to orders, the first defense; 10. Command responsibility and respondeat superior; 11. Ruses and perfidy; 12. Torture; 13. Rules of engagement; 14. Targeting; 15. Attacks on cultural property; 16. The 1980 certain conventional weapons convention; 17. Gas, biological and chemical weapons treaties.