The following comments are offered from the perspective of a government lawyer but very much on a personal basis; they do not necessarily represent the views of the UK Government.
The relationship between academic scholarship and the practical application of international law by States and other actors has always been a close, indeed a symbiotic, one. After all, the analysis and study of international law is to a very large extent focused on what States and others say and do – or should say and do – whilst legal scholarship has always provided an essential resource tool for the practitioner and indeed a subsidiary source of law itself.
That said it is still remarkable to find a work of scholarship which, given when Dr Alex Wentker started his research, has proved so prescient in addressing a topic which has become of current and real importance to the international community and which equally provides, through a rigorous examination of key concepts, practical criteria for determining when actors become co-parties to an armed conflict. The sober title Party Status to Armed Conflict in International Law might not be one to grab the immediate attention of a hard-pressed government official or diplomat but the heading of last year’s Chatham House paper Joining In Wars – in whose drafting and elaboration Alex played a central role – emphasises the political, military and diplomatic, as well as legal, significance of the issues at the heart of his book.
