«The Broken Years»: War Crimes and the laws of war under the impact of the First World War

When the First World War began, the international co-operation of legal academics, which had been a characteristic of the late 19th and early 20th century came to a halt. In the context of the atrocities in Belgium as well as Serbia academics on both sides became involved in the propaganda campaigns of the belligerents on both sides. Not many of them were able to divest themselves. The presentation will claim that as a consequence the time between the First World War and the beginning of the Second can be characterized as «Broken Years» not only in regard to war veterans (Gammage 1974), but also in regard to the international academic discourse on issues of war crimes and the laws of war. This shall be substantiated by a look at academic activities in the interwar period within the International Law Association, the Institut de Droit International, the Interparliamentary Union, the Association Internationale de Droit Pénal and the Internationale Kriminalistische Vereinigung.

“Delendum est Imperium Ottomanorum“: War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity and the End of the Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire’s status as a full member of the international community of civilized states, which was bound by the rules of international law, had been challenged again and again during the formative period of the international law in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. When the First World War began, it was the first global military conflict, in which these rules of international law were put to the test. In the case of the Ottoman Empire quite a few questions were not yet settled, not least because the country was still bound by unequal treaties and because it had never ratified the renewed Hague Rules of Land Warfare of 1907, which it had only signed under reservations. Against this background the contribution will therefore focus on the debate amongst legal scholars on violations of the laws of war (and humanity) in regard to the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.

Punitive reactions to completed crimes versus accidentally uncompleted crimes

Previous studies have shown that the harm caused by crime affects punitive reactions even if differences in the degree of harm are merely accidental. However, it remains unclear whether the effect is direct or whether it is mediated by attributed responsibility or blame. Participants were 303 university students who listened to 4 case vignettes (between-subjects design). Half received information about a completed crime and half about an accidentally uncompleted crime. Crime type was either fraud or rape. The results suggest that individuals consider the actual harm to a significantly greater extent than attribution theory would predict. Moreover, the link between harm and punishment was virtually not mediated by attributed blame and not moderated by individual differences in morality. Future studies should investigate whether the harm-punishment link is a result of an automatic act of retaliation or a desire to compensate for the harm done to the victim (restorative justice).