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The Law of Armed Conflict: An Operational Approach, Third Edition

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Authors
  • Geoffrey S. Corn
  • Gary Corn
  • Victor Hansen
  • M. Christopher Jenks
  • Eric Talbot Jensen
  • Michael W. Meier
  • James A. Schoettler
Series / Aspen Casebook Series
BOOKMARK
Book length
608 pages
Publication Date
2026-07-29
Edition
Third Edition
Description

Buy a new version of this textbook and receive access to the Connected eBook on Casebook Connect, including academic lifetime access to the online ebook with highlight, annotation, and search capabilities. Access also includes an outline tool and other helpful resources. Connected eBooks provide what you need most to be successful in your law school classes.

The Law of Armed Conflict: An Operational Approach is a comprehensive treatment of the international legal regulation of armed conflicts and how that law is implemented through national and coalition policies and practice, with a special emphasis on the military operational context for such implementation. All authors are retired United States Army officers, and most have served in operational capacities as both legal advisors and combat leaders (with more than 140 years of collective military operational experience). Each author has taught extensively at various law schools, and is recognized as a leading scholar in the field of international law and conflict regulation. This has enabled them to develop a text that addresses a broad range of complex legal issues related to the regulation of armed conflicts and to do so in a way that provides students with critical insight into the strategic, operational, and tactical challenges associated with implementing these obligations. Their text covers all aspects of the law of armed conflict and explains the important difference between law and policy in regulation of military operations, and the challenge of reconciling differing interpretations of the law during multi-national coalition operations.

Utilizing military operational scenarios and hypotheticals drawn from both history and the authors’ collective backgrounds, this text provides the context necessary to develop a genuine understanding of the law and distinguishes the text from others focused purely on the substance of the law. Its unique pedagogy is based on overviews of each topical area of the law and utilizes a wartime scenario. Students experience operational legal challenges armed forces confront from pre-deployment preparation through post-conflict stability operations to war crimes investigation and prosecution. The text focuses primarily on the U.S. legal interpretations, but also includes discussion of important areas of legal divergence between U.S. and major Coalition partners, as well as the perspectives drawn from the academic and non-governmental humanitarian communities. This exposes students to the challenges these divergences can create for decision-makers and their legal advisors during actual military operations.

New to the Third Edition:

  • Incorporates legal issues and lessons learned from recent conflicts including Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine
  • Updates national positions on law of armed conflict issues
  • Added emphasis on the doctrine of neutrality based on current armed conflicts
  • Distinct operational scenarios and problem sets for each chapter
  • Updated treatment of all areas of the law reflecting recent conflicts
  • Addition of a new author resulting in three authors with experience as the U.S. Army’s senior expert law of armed conflict advisor
  • Expanded treatment of the intersection of emerging technology and military operations 

Professors and students will benefit from:

  • Authority: more than 140 years of collective military experience as military operational legal advisors
    • written by a group of some of the most respected scholars in the field with a record of publication exceeding 100 articles
    • all authors retired U.S. military officers now teaching at leading U.S. law schools
    • all authors with experience in military legal and/or operational assignments during recent U.S. operations
  • Rich with documentation and examples:
    • excerpts from treaties and treaty commentaries
    • domestic and international cases and sources
    • international and domestic jurisprudence
    • Department of Defense manuals and directives
    • service field manuals
    • regulations implementing legal obligations
  • Comprehensive coverage of all aspects of the law of armed conflict:
    • explains the difference between law and policy in regulation of military operations
    • provides an overview of operational scenarios for each chapter tailored to the chapter’s focus
    • focuses on U.S. legal and operational perspectives in recent armed conflicts, with exposure to areas where legal interpretations for U.S. forces diverge from those of other States and non-government organizations
    • addresses jus ad bellum and jus in bello issues
  • Unique pedagogy
    • overviews of each topical area of the law
    • utilizes wartime scenarios for each chapter
      • students experience operational legal issues from pre-deployment preparation through post-conflict stability operations to war crimes investigation and prosecution
    • carefully crafted problems follow each chapter
      • based on historical examples and actual operational experience
      • place the student in the position of a military legal adviser providing operational legal advice
      • students enhance their understanding of the relevance of the law in modern conflicts and in planning and executing military operations
  • Enables students to understand not only the substance of the law, but also to appreciate the context in which the law applies and the challenge of implementation
  • Suitable for a two, three or four credit offering
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About the authors
Geoffrey S. Corn
Texas Tech University School of Law

Geoffrey S. Corn is the George R. Killam Jr. Chair of Criminal Law and Director of the Center for Military Law and Policy. Professor Corn comes to Texas Tech University School of Law from South Texas College of Law Houston where he was the Gary A. Kuiper Distinguished Professor of National Security. Prior to joining the South Texas College of Law Houston faculty in 2005, Professor Corn served in the U.S. Army for 21 years as an officer, and a final year as a civilian legal advisor, retiring in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Professor Corn’s teaching and scholarship focuses on the law of armed conflict, national security law, criminal law and procedure, and prosecutorial ethics. He has appeared an expert witness at the Military Commission in Guantanamo, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and in federal court.

He is co-author of Criminal Law: Classroom to Courtroom (forthcoming), The Law of Armed Conflict: An Operational Perspective, The Laws of War and the War on Terror, National Security Law and the Constitution, National Security Law and Policy: a Student Treatise, The Law in War: A Concise Overview, and Principles of Counter-Terrorism Law.

His Army career included service as the Army’s senior law of war expert advisor, tactical intelligence officer in Panama; supervisory defense counsel for the Western United States; Chief of International Law for US Army Europe; Professor of International and National Security Law at the US Army Judge Advocate General’s School; and Chief Prosecutor for the 101st Airborne Division. He earned is B.A. from Hartwick College in Oneonta, NY, his J.D. with highest honors from George Washington University, his LLM as the distinguished graduate from the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s School. He is also a distinguished military graduate of U.S. Army Officer Candidate School, and a graduate of U.S. Army Command and General Staff Course.

Gary Corn
Professor
American University Washington College of Law

Professor Gary Corn is a recently retired U.S. Army colonel, and is widely recognized as one of the nation’s top experts on cyber and national security law. Prior to joining TLS, Professor Corn served over twenty-seven years on active duty in the U.S. Army as a military attorney practicing national security law at the highest levels within the Department of Defense. His final five years he served as the Staff Judge Advocate (General Counsel) to U.S. Cyber Command. Professor Corn is a frequent, and highly-sought out speaker at international and national conferences and has published numerous articles, book chapters, and blog posts, including in the American Journal of International Law, The Temple International and Comparative Law Journal, the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, and on Just Security. For the past several years, he has, via U.S. Cyber Command, run a major international law conference, drawing hundreds of military and civilian leading international law scholars and practitioners. During his military career, Professor Corn also served as a Deputy Legal Counsel to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Operational Law Branch Chief in the Office of the Judge Advocate General of the Army, a Special Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Columbia, and on deployment as the Chief of International Law for Combined Forces Command in Afghanistan. Professor Corn received a JD from the George Washington University, a BA in International Relations from Bucknell University, an LLM from the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School, and an MA in National Security Studies from the United States Army War College. Professor Corn is an Advisory Board Director for the Cyber Security Forum Initiative.

Victor Hansen
New England Law, Boston

Professor of Law Victor Hansen teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Evidence, and Prosecutorial Ethics at New England Law School-Boston. Before joining the New England Law faculty in 2005, he served a 20-year career in the Army, most of that time as a JAG Corps officer. In his last military assignment, he served as a regional defense counsel for the United States Army Trial Defense Service. His previous assignments include work as a military prosecutor and supervising prosecutor. He has been involved in military capital litigation as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney. He also served as an associate professor of law at The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School in Charlottesville, VA. He is the author of several articles and books on criminal and military law, evidence, and national security issues, and is an elected member of the American Law Institute.

M. Christopher Jenks

Chris Jenks is a research professor of law. His research interests are at the intersection of the law of armed conflict, accountability norms and emerging technology. He is the co-author of a criminal law textbook and two editions of a law of armed conflict textbook and has published book chapters with both Oxford and Cambridge University Presses. His articles have appeared in the law reviews and journals of Harvard, Berkeley, Georgetown, Stanford, & Washington & Lee and the International Review of the Red Cross. His blog posts have been featured on Lawfare, Just Security, and Opinio Juris. He has published opeds with Newsweek, Stars and Stripes, and USA Today. He has testified before the US Congress’ Helsinki Commission and presented to House and Senate Staffers on Capitol Hill, the European Parliamentary Technology Assessment, at the American Society of International Law, the Council on Foreign Relations, and at universities and institutes around the world.

Prior to joining the SMU faculty, Professor Jenks served for more than 20 years in the U.S. military, first as an infantry officer and later as a judge advocate and was detailed to both the human rights and refugees and the political/military affairs sections of the Office of the Legal Adviser at the Department of State and as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney on both the civil and criminal side at the Department of Justice.

The Department of Justice’s Counterterrorism Section nominated him for the John Marshall Award for interagency cooperation following his work as the lead prosecutor in the Army’s first counterterrorism trial involving a soldier who attempted to aid the al-Qaeda terrorist network. While working at the Department of State, he served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly. In his last assignment, Professor Jenks served as the chief of the international law branch for the U.S. Army in the Pentagon, where he supervised the program by which foreign countries asserted criminal jurisdiction over U.S. service members and represented the Department of Defense at Status of Forces Agreement negotiations; he was also the legal adviser to the U.S. military observers group, which provides personnel to U.N. missions around the world.

Eric Talbot Jensen
Brigham Young University School of LAw

Eric Talbot Jensen is a professor of law at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and recently returned to BYU after serving for a year as the Special Counsel to the Department of Defense General Counsel. Prior to joining the BYU law faculty in 2011, Professor Jensen spent 2 years teaching at Fordham Law School in New York City and 20 years in the United States Army as both a Cavalry Officer and as a Judge Advocate. During his time as a Judge Advocate, Professor Jensen served in various positions including as the Chief of the Army’s International Law Branch; Deputy Legal Advisor for Task Force Baghdad; Professor of International and Operational Law at The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School; legal advisor to the US contingent of UN Forces deployed to Skopje, Macedonia as part of UNPREDEP; and legal advisor in Bosnia in support of Operation Joint Endeavor/Guard. Professor Jensen is a graduate of Brigham Young University (B.A., International Relations), University of Notre Dame Law School (J.D.), The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School (LL.M.) and Yale Law School (LL.M.). Professor Jensen is an expert in the law of armed conflict, public international law, national security law, and cyber warfare. He was one of the group of experts who prepared the Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare and is currently working on the Tallinn Manual dealing with cyber operations more generally. He is co-author on The Law of Armed Conflict: An Operational Perspective, The Laws of War and the War on Terror, and National Security Law and Policy: a Student Treatise. He is the author of more than thirty law journal publications focusing on international law, national security law, cyber law and international criminal law.

James A. Schoettler
Georgetown University

Professor Schoettler is a retired U.S. Army officer. He served 30 years in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps on active duty and in the Reserves. For many years, he was assigned to the International and Operational Law Division of the U.S. Army’s Office of the Judge Advocate General, where he was Assistant Chief. Professor Schoettler completed his military career as Deputy Counsel and Staff Judge Advocate in the Defense Prisoner of War Missing Personnel Office (now Defense POW/MIA Accounting Office).

Since 2006, Professor Schoettler has taught courses in the Law of War (International Humanitarian Law) at the Georgetown University Law Center. Professor Schoettler is a co-author of The War on Terror and the Laws of War: A Military Perspective published by Oxford University Press. Most recently, he published an article on the principle of precautions with Professor Geoffrey Corn in the U.S. Army’s Military Law Review (G. Corn & J. Schoettler, "Targeting and Civilian Risk Mitigation: The Essential Role of Precautionary Measures," 223 Mil. L. Rev 785 (2015)).

In addition to his academic and military activities, Professor Schoettler is Deputy General Counsel and Director, Corporate Compliance for a nuclear energy company in the Washington, D.C. area.
Product Information
Edition
Third Edition
Publication date
2026-07-29
Copyright Year
2026
Pages
608
Print + eBook
9798886142280
eBook
9798892071871
Subject
National Security and Armed Conflict
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