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Responsibility for the Crime of Aggression under International Law

Responsibility for the Crime of Aggression under International Law cover

Responsibility for the Crime of Aggression under International Law

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Pre-order. Available 14 May 2026
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Description

This book makes a simple but consequential claim: individuals who decisively influence a state's decision to use armed force should be held criminally responsible for aggressive war.

Challenging the prevailing orthodoxy, it reconstructs the leadership clause in the definition of the crime of aggression and offers a new attribution framework that reflects how decisions about war are actually made. Under this approach, liability is not confined to heads of state and top military leaders but extends to civilian power brokers, private actors, and third-state officials who, as reason-giving and reason-demanding participants in key moments of deliberation, exercise decisive influence over whether a state goes to war – or continues one. By clarifying who counts as a “leader” and why, the book charts a principled middle path between overcriminalising ordinary participation in war and immunising those who set unlawful wars in motion. Grounded in Nuremberg and Tokyo jurisprudence and contemporary doctrine, it offers a timely rethinking of individual responsibility for the unlawful use of force.

Table of Contents

Part I: The Crime of Aggression in International Law
1. Introduction
2. Aggression in International Law: The State Act and the Crime

Part II: The Limits of Individual Responsibility for the Crime of Aggression
3. The Theory of Criminal Responsibility
4. Material and Mental Elements of the Crime of Aggression
5. The Leadership Clause in the Crime of Aggression

Part III: Modes of Liability for the Crime of Aggression
6. Principles of Attribution of Individual Criminal Responsibility in International Law
7. Principal Responsibility
8. Complicity
9. Responsibility of Commanders and Other Superiors
10. Conclusion

Product details

Published 14 May 2026
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Extent 272
ISBN 9781509987597
Imprint Hart Publishing
Dimensions 234 x 156 mm
Series Studies in International Law
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Nikola Hajdin

Nikola Hajdin is a fellow at Stanford Law School,…

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