PhD Thesis
Title: Balancing Military Necessity and Humanity in the Law of Targeting
PhD Supervisor: Andrew Clapham
Profile
Abhimanyu is a PhD candidate researching international humanitarian law rules governing the conduct of hostilities. He is a research associate with the LAWS & War Crimes project and a visiting lecturer at the National Law School of India University and the Swiss School for International Relations. Abhimanyu is admitted to the practice of law in India and in England and Wales and has previously worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, as a corporate lawyer at Norton Rose Fulbright LLP and as a consultant to the Indian government on investment arbitration disputes.
His research looks at how military necessity and humanity are balanced in, and produce, the law of targeting (LoT). It treats the concepts of 'military necessity', 'humanity' and 'balance' as empty signifiers and shifts the focus to how they are invoked as arguments in LoT discourse. To this end, his study analyses how arguments from military necessity shape the LoT – e.g., as an epistemic privilege which insulates military operations from civilian scrutiny, or by conflating operational preferences with the legal doctrine of military necessity to produce legal change. And it considers how humanity is reduced to a check on, rather than counterweight to, military necessity – e.g., through the logic of the lesser evil which secures the descent of humanitarian reason into humanitarian violence. The objective of his study is to problematise the balance metaphor to demonstrate that the LoT is skewed towards military necessity, and in this way to trace the humanitarian failures of the LoT to its doctrines rather than external structural constraints.
Relevant Publications
-
Research Handbook on War Crimes (under contract with Edward Elgar, 2023 forthcoming) (co-editor Paola Gaeta)
-
'Autonomous Military Capabilities, Errors and Responsibility Under IHL', 21(2) Journal of International Criminal Justice (invited contribution to symposium issue, 2023 forthcoming)
-
‘Bangladesh and the Right of Remedial Secession’, in Jure Vidmar, Lea Raible and Sarah McGibbon (eds), Research Handbook on Secession (Edward Elgar 2022 forthcoming)
-
‘Individualisation of IHL Through Criminal Responsibility for War Crimes and Some (Un)Intended Consequences’, in Dapo Akande, David Rodin and Jennifer Welsh (eds), The Individualisation of War (OUP 2022 forthcoming) (co-author Paola Gaeta)
-
‘Autonomous Cyber Capabilities and Individual Criminal Responsibility for War Crimes’, in Rain Liivoja and Ann Väljataga (eds), Autonomous Cyber Capabilities and International Law 291-320 (NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence 2021)
-
‘The 2015 Indian Model BIT’ in Mahdev Mohan and Chester Brown (eds), The Asian Turn in Investment Arbitration (Cambridge University Press 2019) (forthcoming) (co-author)
-
Quarterly reports on Indian state practice relating to international law in the Indian Journal of International Law (2014-18)
-
‘Case Note: Maritime Dispute (Peru v. Chile)’ (2015) 109 American Journal of International Law 379
-
‘Universal Civil Jurisdiction in International Law’ (2015) 55 Indian Journal of International Law 209
-
‘The 21st Century Atlantis: The International Law of Statehood and Climate Change-Induced Loss of Territory’ (2014) 50 Stanford Journal of International Law 1
-
‘Rationalising International Law Rules on Self-Defence: The Pin-Prick Doctrine’ (2014) XII Chicago-Kent Journal of International and Comparative Law 23
-
‘“Economy of Use” in the 1997 UN Convention on Shared Watercourses: An Attempt at Elucidation’ (2014) 25 Colorado Natural Resources, Energy and Environmental Law Review 125
-
Derivatives as a Test Case for International Financial Regulation Through the WTO’ (2014) 48 Journal of World Trade 135
-
‘Interpreting the “Removal” Obligation in Article 7.8 of the WTO SCM Agreement’ (2013) 10 Manchester Journal of International Economic Law 402
-
‘Consent to Counterclaims in Investor-State Arbitration: A Post-Roussalis Analysis’ [2013] International Arbitration Law Review 135
Academic Work Experience
Research Experience
Research Associate with the LAWS & War Crimes project led by Paola Gaeta
Teaching Experience
Visiting lecturer at the National Law School of India University
Visiting lecturer at the Swiss School for International Relations
Affiliation
- Practice of Law in India
- Practice of Law in England and Wales