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Jus ad bellum (Latin for "Justice to War"; see also Just War
Just War

Just War theory is a doctrine of military ethics of Roman philosophical and Catholic origin studied by moral theologians, ethicists and international policy makers which holds that a conflict can and ought to meet the criteria of philosophy, religion or politics justice, provided it follows certain Indicative conditional....
) are a set of criteria that are consulted before engaging in war
War

...
, in order to determine whether entering into war is justifiable.

Jus ad bellum is sometimes considered a part of the laws of war
Laws of war

The law of war is law concerning acceptable practices relating to war. In cases other than civil wars, it is considered an aspect of public international law ....
, although the term "laws of war" can also be considered to refer to jus in bello, which concerns whether a war is conducted justly (regardless of whether the initiation of hostilities was just).






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Jus ad bellum (Latin for "Justice to War"; see also Just War
Just War

Just War theory is a doctrine of military ethics of Roman philosophical and Catholic origin studied by moral theologians, ethicists and international policy makers which holds that a conflict can and ought to meet the criteria of philosophy, religion or politics justice, provided it follows certain Indicative conditional....
) are a set of criteria that are consulted before engaging in war
War

...
, in order to determine whether entering into war is justifiable.

Jus ad bellum is sometimes considered a part of the laws of war
Laws of war

The law of war is law concerning acceptable practices relating to war. In cases other than civil wars, it is considered an aspect of public international law ....
, although the term "laws of war" can also be considered to refer to jus in bello, which concerns whether a war is conducted justly (regardless of whether the initiation of hostilities was just). See G. E. M. Anscombe
G. E. M. Anscombe

G. E. M. Anscombe , born Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe, but better known as Elizabeth Anscombe, was a United Kingdom Analytic philosophy....
.

An international agreement limiting the justifiable reasons for a country to declare war against another is concerned with jus ad bellum. In addition to bilateral non-aggression pacts, the twentieth century saw multilateral treaties defining entirely new restrictions against going to war. The three most notable examples are the Kellogg-Briand Pact
Kellogg-Briand Pact

The Kellogg-Briand Pact, also known as the Pact of Paris or Paris Peace Pact., after the city where it was signed on August 27, 1928, was an international treaty "providing for the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy." It failed in its purpose but was significant for later developments in international law....
 outlawing war as an instrument of national policy, the London Charter
London Charter of the International Military Tribunal

The London Charter of the International Military Tribunal was the decree issued on August 8, 1945, that set down the laws and procedures by which the Nuremberg trials were to be conducted....
 (known also as the Nuremberg Charter) defining "crimes against peace" as one of three major categories of international crime to be prosecuted after World War II, and the United Nations Charter
United Nations Charter

The United Nations Charter is the treaty that forms and establishes the international organization called the United Nations. It was signed at the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, California, United States, on June 26, 1945, by 50 of the 51 original member countries ....
, which binds nations to seek resolution of disputes by peaceful means and requires authorization by the United Nations before a nation may initiate any use of force against another, beyond repulsing an immediate armed attack against its sovereign territory. By contrast, agreements defining limits on acceptable conduct while already engaged in war are considered "rules of war" and are referred to as the jus in bello. Thus the Geneva Conventions
Geneva Conventions

The Geneva Conventions consist of four treaties formulated in Geneva, Switzerland, that set the standards for international law for humanitarian concerns....
 are a set of "jus in bello". Doctrines concerning the protection of civilians in wartime, or the need for "proportionality" when force is used, are addressed to issues of conduct within a war, but the same doctrines can also shed light on the question of when it is lawful (or unlawful) to go to war in the first place.

These terms are used in discussions of international law
International law

Public international law concerns the structure and conduct of states and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond domestic legal interpretation and enforcement....
 and philosophy
Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, validity, mind, and language....
.

According to Robert Kolb:

The august solemnity of Latin confers on the terms jus ad bellum and jus in bello the misleading appearance of being centuries old. In fact, these expressions were only coined at the time of the League of Nations
League of Nations

The League of Nations was an inter-governmental organization founded as a result of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919?1920. At its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it had 58 members....
 and were rarely used in doctrine or practice until after the Second World War, in the late 1940s to be precise.


By this Kolb means that the terms themselves as legal terms, and the subdivision of the doctrine of just war into the branches jus ad bellum and jus in bello, are recent. The concept of just war and the term bellum justum dates to St. Augustine of Hippo in the fifth century.

See also

  • Bellum iustum
    Bellum iustum

    'Bellum iustum' in Latin stands for "just war", or, a war that is a "justification for going to war, gathered under the ius ad bellum, and including ideas of just cause, right authority, last resort, right intention and the superior and final goal of achieving peace, or the other main component of just war tradition, the ius in bello'...
  • Bellum sacrum
  • Casus Belli
    Casus belli

    Casus belli is a Latin language expression meaning the justification for acts of war. Casus means "incident", "rupture" or indeed "case", while belli means "of war"....
  • Command responsibility
    Command responsibility

    Command responsibility, sometimes referred to as the Yamashita standard or the Medina standard, is the doctrine of hierarchical accountability in cases of war crimes....
  • Just War
    Just War

    Just War theory is a doctrine of military ethics of Roman philosophical and Catholic origin studied by moral theologians, ethicists and international policy makers which holds that a conflict can and ought to meet the criteria of philosophy, religion or politics justice, provided it follows certain Indicative conditional....
  • UN Charter


Further reading

  • International Committee of the Red Cross


Footnotes