Few foreign policy issues in the past decade have elicited as much controversy as the use of military force for humanitarian purposes. In this book Brian Lepard offers a new method for analyzing humanitarian intervention that seeks to resolve conflicts among legal norms by identifying ethical principles embedded in the UN Charter and international law and relating them to a pivotal principle of "unity in diversity."A special feature of the book, which avoids the charge of ethnocent...

This is a personal story of spiritual search and discovery that connects the relationship between the teachings of Christianity and the teachings of the Bahai Faith.Author Brian Lepard begins by drawing on his childhood religious experiences and his study of the Bible and holy books from other world religious traditions. He recounts his own personal spiritual journey and discovery of the Bahai Faith. He describes the lives of the central figures of the Bahai Faith: the Bab, Bah...

Customary international law, although long recognized as a primary source of international law, remains replete with enigmas, both conceptual and practical. These include how to determine the existence of opinio juris, the function of the state practice requirement, the definition of jus cogens customary norms, and the relationship between customary international law and ethics. In part because of these enigmas, the subject has generated a wide-ranging literature. However, no recent book-l...

The events of September 11, 2001 forever punctured any illusions that Americans are safe from the fanaticism and terrorism so depressingly familiar to residents of the Middle East and other troubled areas of the globe. Numerous wars, including in Iraq, but particularly in the underdeveloped areas of the world, such as Africa, claim countless lives annually and leave many others horribly injured and disabled. At the same time, and often as a direct result of wars and civil conflicts, mill...

Reexamining Customary International Law takes on the complex issues and controversies surrounding the history, theory, and practice of customary international law as it reexamines customary law's increasingly important role in world affairs. It incorporates the expertise of distinguished authors to probe many difficult issues that remain unresolved concerning the doctrine of customary law. At the same time, this book engages in a profound exploration of the practical role of customary inte...