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108 Am. Soc'y Int'l L. Proc. 370 (2014)
Leashing the Dogs of War: Examining the Effects of LOAC Training at the U.S. Military Academy and in Army ROTC

handle is hein.journals/asilp108 and id is 384 raw text is: 370 ASIL Proceedings, 2014

treaties actually spur investment flows. In a fascinating paper, Adam Chilton, who is joining
the faculty at the University of Chicago Law School, explores an alternative theory that
foreign policy interests best predict the countries with which the United States signs BITs.
International law, in other words, can purport to have a particular focus, but it involves
strategies and has effects that are not reflected in the text. Chilton provides an excellent
review of the existing literature, presents an important new theory, and thoughtfully analyzes
new data in support of this theory. His project shows how realist perspectives remain important
for empirical investigation.
The law of armed conflict is notoriously the most challenged in terms of its effectiveness
given the extreme context in which it operates. Using important original survey research,
Andrew Bell, a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and current Ph.D.
candidate at Duke, turns to micro-analysis of organizational culture to explore how training
over time affects cadets' ethical norms toward the treatment of civilians during armed conflict.
Earlier work has speculated that it is such training that should give meaning to the law of
war, such as the treatment of civilians during armed conflict, but this theory has not been
tested. Bell does so by turning his research away from macro-state analysis and toward micro-
organizational analysis. He examines the effects of training at the U.S. Military Academy and
Army ROTC through comparative surveys of cadets during their freshman and senior years.
This ongoing research, which examines the effects of law of war training on both military
members' internal norms and their behavior in combat, represents an important, cutting-edge
turn in the assessment of how, and the conditions under which, international law matters.
Finally, Anna Schrimpf, a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton, who unfortunately cannot be part
of these published proceedings, presented compelling work building from an original dataset
that investigates international NGOs' behavior in the international law sphere. As initiatives
increasingly involve public-private partnerships to develop international law, exemplified in
the realm of health law in particular, empirical investigations of NGO activity become critical.
In this work, Schrimpf investigates how NGOs in the field of health law make decisions as
to what health law initiatives to support.
These scholars, at various points in their early careers, are to be followed. We are fortunate
to have them as part of a collective effort to build better understanding of how international
law conditionally operates, whether among states, engaging private actors, or operating
transnationally at the national and subnational levels. Their work reflects how international
law's reach has expanded and how it dynamically interacts with domestic legal systems and
sub-national organizations.
LEASHING THE DOGS OF WAR: EXAMINING THE EFFECTS OF LOAC
TRAINING AT THE U.S. MILITARY ACADEMY AND IN ARMY ROTC
By Andrew Bell*
What effect does international law have on military behavior on the battlefield? What
factors drive states to comply-or not comply-with the law of armed conflict (LOAC)? In
recent decades, legal scholars have wrestled with this question, arguing variously that the
law's effects come from the shaping of actors' internal norms, the changing of external
. J.D., University of Virginia School of Law; Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science, Duke University; M.A.,
University of Virginia; M.A., Duke University; M.T.S., Duke Divinity School, Predoctoral Fellow, The Elliott
School of International Affairs, George Washington University.

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