Editor’s note: this webpage is the text of a portion of “Quantum of Silence: Inaction and Jus ad Bellum,” by Dustin A. Lewis, Naz K. Modirzadeh, and Gabriella Blum, HLS PILAC, 2019. A link to the PDF version of this part is available here, and a link to the full paper and annex is available here.

Credits

About HLS PILAC

The Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict (HLS PILAC) provides a space for research on critical challenges facing the various fields of public international law related to armed conflict, including jus ad bellum, jus in bello (international humanitarian law/the law of armed conflict), international human rights law, international criminal law, and the law of state responsibility. Its mode is critical, independent, and rigorous. HLS PILAC’s methodology fuses traditional public international law research with targeted analysis of changing security environments. The Program does not engage in advocacy. While its contributors may express a range of views on contentious legal and policy debates, HLS PILAC does not take institutional positions on these matters.

About the Authors

Dustin A. Lewis is a Senior Researcher at HLS PILAC. Naz K. Modirzadeh, the Founding Director of HLS PILAC, is a Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School. And Gabriella Blum, the Faculty Director of HLS PILAC, is the Rita E. Hauser Professor of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at Harvard Law School.

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the following people: HLS PILAC Research Assistants Charles Hobbs, Francesco Romani, and Paras Shah, for research and analysis; HLS PILAC Research Assistants Lindsay Anne Bailey, Emma Broches, Laura Clark, Sonia Chakrabarty, Thejasa Jayachandran, Daniel Levine-Spound, Sarah Libowsky, Samantha Lint, Yang Liu, Carolina Silva-Portero, Shira Shamir, William Ossoff, Tamsin Parzen, and Shanelle Van, for contributing to the catalogue contained in the Annex; Jennifer Allison, Bridget J. Reischer, and Caroline Walters of the Harvard Law School (HLS) Library, as well as other members of the HLS Library staff, for research support; participants in the 2017–2019 informal “International Law Lunches” hosted in collaboration with the Permanent Missions to the United Nations in New York of Belgium, Liechtenstein, Mexico, Norway, and Switzerland, for discussion and feedback; Scott Anderson, Ashley Deeks, Mona Khalil, Eliav Lieblich, Marko Milanovic, Tom Ruys, Stephen Townley, and Larissa van den Herik, for feedback on the catalogue; Jessica S. Burniske, for copy-editing; and Thomas Ewing and Elvina Pothelet for translation assistance.

Disclaimers

HLS PILAC receives generous support from the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA). The views expressed in this paper and annex should not be taken, in any way, to reflect the official opinion of the Swiss FDFA. HLS PILAC is grateful for the support that the Swiss FDFA provides for independent research and analysis. The research undertaken by the authors of this paper and annex was completely independent; the views and opinions reflected in this paper and annex are those solely of the respective authors; and those authors alone are responsible for any errors in this paper and its annex.