The Evolving Legal Aspects of War

Abstract

In the aftermath of the two world wars of the twentieth century, the general aspiration of the community of nations has been to put a definitive ending to that kind of catastrophe, and to establish a set of international rules and mechanisms to avoid their re-emergence. The result was the Charter of the United Nations, formally adopted in San Francisco on 26 June 1945, even before the end of the Second World War. The UN Charter remains till now the main legal instrument, including specific rules and related bodies, about the international use of force, its limitations, and enforcement thereof. The Charter had been preceded by several decades of efforts leading to a general prohibition of war in international relations among states. The Versailles Treaty in 1919, which included the Covenant of the League of Nations, made some moves in that direction, and was completed ten years later by the Briand–Kellogg pact (1928), banning war for national interest purposes.