"There is no justification under international law for the use of military force against Iraq. The UN charter outlaws the use of force with only two exceptions: individual or collective self-defence in response to an armed attack and action authorised by the security council as a collective response to a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression. There are currently no grounds for a claim to use such force in self-defence. The doctrine of pre-emptive self-defence against an attack that might arise at some hypothetical future time has no basis in international law. Neither security council resolution 1441 nor any prior resolution authorises the proposed use of force in the present circumstances...

A decision to undertake military action in Iraq without proper security council authorisation will seriously undermine the international rule of law. Of course, even with that authorisation, serious questions would remain. A lawful war is not necessarily a just, prudent or humanitarian war."

• Reader in Law, London School of Economics and Political Science
  Focus: International Criminal Law; International Law; Self-Determination; War Crimes

• none listed

• Great Powers and Outlaw States, Cambridge University Press, 2004
• "The Great Powers, Sovereign Equality and the Making of the United Nations Charter," Australian Yearbook of International Law, 2002
• The Nature of International Law, editor, Ashgate, 2002
• "Remembering and Forgetting," Political Quarterly, 2001
• "Two Liberalisms," European Journal of International Law, 2001
• "The Diffusion of Sovereignty: Self-determinations in the Post-Colonial Age," Self-determination in International Law, R. Ashgate, 2000
• "The Situation on the International Legal Theory Front," European Journal of International Law, 2000