The Right to Life

While in political discourse in the United States the "right to life" is typically only considered relevant to the debate over abortion, this volume, which reproduces 18 papers from an October 2008 conference held jointly by the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Volkerrecht (German Society of International Law) and the Societe francaise pour le droit international (the French Society for International Law), is using the term in a much broader sense in order to understand what bringing a more central focus to the right to human life means for international law in general and international humanitarian law in particular. Among the topics addressed by the papers are the use of force by police, the death penalty, the duty to investigate the death of persons detained by authorities, the crime of genocide in legal jurisprudence, the right to life and the legal understanding of military necessity, "irregular combatants" in situations of military occupation, "targeted killings" (i.e. state ordered and prosecuted assassinations) as a challenge to international law, the treatment of assassinations within the jurisprudence of the Israeli Supreme Court, tyrannicide and international law, the right to life and the obligation to reduce child mortality, and ecological refugees and international law. Eight of the papers are in French and the rest are in English. Martinus Nijhoff is an imprint of Brill. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Christian Tomuschat, Professor Emeritus, Humboldt University Berlin, Faculty of Law. He was a member of the UN Human Rights Committee (1977 to 1986) and the UN International Law Commission (1985 to 1996). Author of Human Rights. Between Idealism and Realism (2nd. ed. 2008).