Law in War: Targeting, Legal Reasoning and the Use of Force in Armed Conflict

The objective of the PhD thesis is to examine the changing character of law in war, focussing specifically on the role that legal considerations play in decisions surrounding targeting and the use of force in situations of armed conflict. Exactly how legal considerations should shape decisions in armed conflict is a matter of fierce debate. At the same time, however, the role that the law actually does play in situations of war remains under-explored. With a focus on 'legal ethnomethods' in armed conflict, i.e. the practical forms of legal reasoning that military operatives collaboratively engage in as part of the decisions about when and how to employ the use of force, the thesis will seek to address that gap empirically, casting light on the role of the law on the battlefield. More specifically it will approach these issues by examining the cases where those who force was used against were wrongly viewed and categorised as 'legal' targets based on public domain audio, video and transcript data. It will focus on one case in particular, a drone-led airstrike against Afghan civilians who had been mistaken for enemy combatants. The analysis of the incident transcript will provide an empirical anchor for a wider examination of the work of the 'military viewer', i.e. the military personnel actively engaged in identifying 'threats', and the part legal reasoning plays in their targeting decisions. Contemporary targeting practices do result in unintended, unnecessary and unacceptable harms and the results of the thesis will examine exactly how legal reasoning is implicated in that.