Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2007
Abstract
War is with us more than ever. This is true despite the efforts of the United Nations Charter to ban the concept of war from the vocabulary of its member states. The preferred term is armed conflict. True, the Charter does refer to the Second World War, but apart from this concession to historically entrenched labels, the W word appears only once-when the Charter refers to ridding the world of the scourge of war. The Geneva Conventions, adopted a few years later, follow the same pattern. George Orwell could not be more amused. We change the vocabulary and think we have changed the world.
Disciplines
Criminal Law | Law | Military, War, and Peace | National Security Law
Recommended Citation
George P. Fletcher,
The Law of War and Its Pathologies,
38
Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev.
517
(2007).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2111