Who Owns the Rules of War?
Another development in the laws of war following World War II was the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 — the first covering wounded or sick soldiers; the second, shipwrecked sailors; the third, prisoners of war; and the fourth, civilians and occupation. The Geneva Conventions also introduced, for the first time in the canonical laws-of-war treaties, individual criminal liability and mandatory ”universal jurisdiction” — the ability (indeed, the obligation) of any and every state to try individuals (or turn them over to a state that would) whenever there was evidence of ”grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions. The question of who is qualified to assert jurisdiction and then judge cases of war crimes is vital to determining who owns the laws of war. Universal jurisdiction says, in effect, lots of people own the laws — but it leaves open the possibility of widely differing interpretations. A case in point is the continuing argument over whether the detainees at Guantanamo are inde
