War and Law: Rethinking the Crime of Aggression

“…any inquiry into the authorship of the war must, to be exhaustive, extend over events that have happened during many years in different European countries, and must raise many difficult and complex problems which might be more fitly investigated by historians and statesmen than by a tribunal appropriate to the trial of offenders against the laws and customs of war….Any tribunal appropriate to deal with the other offences to which reference is made might hardly be a good court to discuss and deal decisively with such a subject as the authorship of war” (Versailles Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of the War and on the Enforcement of PenaltiesCommission Report, 1920, 119).

What exactly is aggression? Does the crime of aggression simply criminalise our enemies? Or is the crime of aggression truly the “crime of crimes”: a crime containing, what the IMT described as, “the accumulated evil of the whole”? Should Putin stand trial? Netanyahu?

In this mini symposium, we will consider these and other questions as a way of opening up discussion of some of the themes from the Lecture/Conversation which will have taken place the night before at the LSE. We strongly encourage students and other interested parties to attend.

Speakers: Claus Kress and Gerry Simpson

This seminar is open to members of the LSE community and will operate on a first-come, first-serve basis.