Responsibility for the Crime of Aggression under International Law

Author: Nikola Hajdin
Publisher: Hart Publishing
ISBN: 9781509987597
Published In: August 2026
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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Description
Contents

Details

This book makes a simple but consequential claim: individuals who decisively influence a state's decision to use armed force should be held criminally responsible for aggressive war.

Challenging the prevailing orthodoxy, it reinterprets the leadership clause in the definition of the crime of aggression and offers a new responsibility framework that reflects how decisions about war are actually made. Under this approach, liability is not confined to heads of state and top military leaders but extends to civilian power brokers, private actors, and third-state officials who are present at key moments of deliberation and, as reason-giving and reason-demanding participants, exercise decisive influence over whether a state goes to war or continues one. By clarifying who counts as a 'leader' and why, the book charts a principled middle path between overcriminalizing ordinary participants in war, such as common foot soldiers and private citizens, and exempting those who set unlawful wars in motion.

Drawing on an eclectic set of sources, the book offers a timely rethinking of individual responsibility for the unlawful uses of force.

Part I: The Crime of Aggression in International Law

1. Introduction

2. Aggression in International Law: The State Act and the Crime

Part II: The Limits of Individual Responsibility for the Crime of Aggression

3. The Theory of Criminal Responsibility

4. Material and Mental Elements of the Crime of Aggression

5. The Leadership Clause in the Crime of Aggression

Part III: Modes of Liability for the Crime of Aggression

6. Principles of Attribution of Individual Criminal Responsibility in International Law

7. Principal Responsibility

8. Complicity

9. Responsibility of Commanders and Other Superiors