Law and War in the Virtual Era

Abstract

Since the first attempts by states to use law to regulate armed conflict, legal constraints have often failed to protect civilians from the adverse effects of war. Advances in military technology have usually not improved this situation and have instead made law even more distant and less relevant to the suffering of civilians in wartime. The massive, indiscriminate incendiary bombing campaigns against major urban areas in World War II spoke volumes about the irrelevance of fundamental legal principles and rules designed to protect civilian populations in wartime. Law and lawyers were in fact far removed, physically and operationally, from the cockpits of the United States bombers flying over Tokyo, whose aircrews were focused on surviving their missions. They struggled with limited information about their assigned targets and conducted their operations with rudimentary preflight instructions that directed them, for example, to avoid destroying the palace of the Japanese emperor but left them free to submerge entire residential areas of the city in a sea of flames.