Janina Dill
Professor of Global Security, University of Oxford
I am the Dame Louise Richardson Chair in Global Security at the Blavatnik School of Government of the University of Oxford. I am also a Fellow at Trinity College and Co-Director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict (ELAC). My research concerns the role of law and morality in international relations, specifically in war. I focus on three strands of work. I am a 2021 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner. First, I write about the legal requirements for the conduct of military operations, speaking to debates on International Law on the use of force and International Humanitarian Law. Second, I develop theories about how international law can be an instrument of morality in war, albeit an imperfect one. This work contributes to debates in just war theory and jurisprudence. Third, I seek to explain how moral and legal norms affect the reality of war. I investigate the capacity of law to constrain military decision-making, how norms shape public opinion and the attitudes of conflict-affected populations i.e. in Afghanistan, Ukraine and Iraq.
EXPs by Janina Dill
Three bodies of international law are relevant to how wars must be waged: a general prohibition on the use of force, which is enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations; the laws of war, which govern how wars must be waged; and international criminal law for holding individuals to account if they violate the laws of war.
It is always an uphill battle to demand compliance with the laws of war. The most urgent and straightforward thing that states right now can and should do is withdraw support from parties to a war that are not complying with international law.
Nuclear weapons were used twice against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States in the closing days of World War II. We want to explain why that is still the only time that nuclear weapons have been used in armed conflict.