War Lawyers - Craig Jones

Dr Craig Jones speaks to Dr Lauren Sanders about his book: War Lawyers, to discuss how some militaries provide legal advice during targeting operations. They talk about the history of operations law, & how this advice is dispensed as well as talking about some challenges & issues with this current model of lawyering.

Dr Craig Jones is the author of The War Lawyers & a lecturer in political geography in the School of Geography, Sociology, & Politics at Newcastle University.  His research focuses on war and (para)military violence, conflict medicine & forced displacement, the geographies of international law & the contemporary Middle East and North Africa.

The War Lawyers: The United States, Israel and Juridical Warfare  examines the involvement of military lawyers in aerial targeting operations carried out by the US military in Iraq & Afghanistan, & the Israeli military in Gaza & the West Bank. It draws on several years of fieldwork & over 50 interviews with US and Israeli military lawyers. It argues that international law has become part of the very fabric of later modern war and that US and Israeli military lawyers play a surprisingly crucial role in planning & executing a wide range of lethal & non-lethal military operations.

Craig also researches access to treatment for the sick and injured in a region where medical & healthcare infrastructures have been destroyed (often deliberately) by military and paramilitary violence. It focuses on three  conflicts in the Middle East - Gaza, Syria & Iraq - & traces the systems of casualty evacuation and medical care that have emerged within & across borders in the region. 

Additional resources:
Craig Jones - The War Lawyers: The United States, Israel and Juridical Warfare , (November 2020) OUP
US Army - Report of the Department of the Army Review of the Preliminary Investigations into the My Lai Incident (14 Mar 1970)
Samuel Moyne - Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War (July 2021) MacMillan
Azmat Khan, Sarak Almukhtar and Rachel Shorey - The Civilian Casualty Files (18 Dec 2021) The New York Times
Eric Liddick, No Legal Objection, Per Se (21 April 2021) War on the Rocks
Michael Barbaro and Azmat Khan, The Civilian Casualties of America's Air Wars (18 Jan 2022) The New York Time The Daily Podcast
Christiane Wilke - Implicated Violence: Socio-legal Approaches to International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law (Forthcoming, Jan 2022) London Review of International Law
Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini - Human Shields (August 2020) UC Press
Noura Erakat - Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine (2019) Stanford University Press
Boyd Van Dijk - Preparing for War: The Making of the Geneva Conventions (2022) OUP
Samuel Moyne - Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast&a