In July 2013, the House of Commons Defence Committee launched an inquiry into the legal framework governing future operations of the British armed forces as part of its preparations for the next Strategic Defence and Security Review. The Committee has now published its findings in a report entitled ‘UK Armed Forces Personnel and the Legal Framework for Future Operations’. This post reviews some of the main features of the report.
The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is a key component of the legal framework governing the activities of the British armed forces. In recent years, the Convention’s application to military operations has come under growing criticism, leading commentators to call upon the Government to derogate from the ECHR during deployed operations. It is not immediately clear, however, whether or not derogations are in fact available to the UK in such circumstances. The purpose of this submission is to shed some light on this issue.
In October 2013, the Policy Exchange, a British think tank dedicated to the development and promotion of new policy ideas, published a Report entitled ‘The Fog of Law: An Introduction to the Legal Erosion of British Fighting Power’. The Report makes fascinating reading and deserves serious attention. Written by Thomas Tugendhat and Laura Croft, its aim is to explain how the cumulative effect of legal developments taking place over the past decade has undermined the ability of Britain’s armed forces to operate effectively on the battlefield. In this post, I offer some critical thoughts on the report.
The Handbook of the International Law of Military Operations. Terry D. Gill and Dieter Fleck (eds). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2010. 688pp. Index. £95. ISBN 978-0-19-954589-6. The present volume constitutes the third instalment in a series of handbooks (co-)edited by Dieter Fleck and published by Oxford University Press. The first of these works, The Handbook
