Military Necessity

Nobuo Hayashi is Visiting Lecturer at the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute. He has two decades of experience researching, publishing, and teaching, including practice at court where he authored submissions, advised prosecutors, and delivered expert presentations at academic and diplomatic conferences. Dr Hayashi specialises in the law of armed conflict, international criminal law and public international law. His most significant works cover military necessity, threat of force, and the law and ethics of nuclear weapons.

• Part I: 1. Introduction; Part II. Military Necessity in its Material Context: 2. Fitness of means and vocational competence; 3. Objections and responses; Part III. Military Necessity in Its Normative Context: 4. Military necessity and legitimacy modification; 5. Inevitable conflict thesis; 6. Joint satisfaction thesis I – alignment and indifference; 7. Joint satisfaction thesis II – accounting for the military necessity-humanity interplay in IHL norm-creation; Part IV. Military Necessity in its Juridical Context: 8. Joint satisfaction thesis III – exclusionary and non-exclusionary effects; 9. Significance and content of juridical military necessity; 10. Military necessity and elements of crimes; Part V: 11. Conclusion.

'Military necessity is a notoriously difficult subject. It represents one side of the underlying principles of the law of armed conflict. Dr Hayashi engages in a nuanced discussion of the nature of the concept, and how it needs to be tempered by the principle of humanity that is its counterpoint. It is a work of great scholarship and a masterful approach to a deeply contentious area.' Robert Cryer, University of Birmingham