(This event was organised by MEI’s Transsystemic Law Research Cluster, as part of its quarterly public talks series.)

Abstract

Non-state armed groups (NSAGs) – whether described as rebels, insurgents, guerrillas, militants or terrorists – are often perceived as lawless entities that defy national and international law and possess no legal personality or authority to make ‘law’. They are thought to rule out of the barrel of a gun and their only law is that of the jungle. Like states and the international community, legal scholars have been traditionally reluctant to recognise non-state law as ‘law’ worthy of legal study. This paper challenged these assumptions of non-state lawlessness. It considered when certain exercises of authority by NSAGs might be recognised as ‘law’; discussed reasons why law is an appealing technique of authority; and raised questions about how to evaluate the legitimacy of ‘illegal’ laws.

Armed groups are often not lawless at all, but bursting with law in archetypally human ways – military, criminal, civil, administrative, public and private. They often also possess legal institutions and processes of various kinds, from informal, traditional or customary dispute resolution mechanisms to formal ‘courts’ and even law schools. Their substantive law is surprisingly not as transformative or revolutionary as might be expected from those who seek to overturn the lawful authority of the state, but is full of continuity with prior state law, hybridity, pluralism and external (vertical and horizontal) influences. The paper also has implications for how other actors – states, international organisations, foreign domestic legal systems, donors and NGOs – might approach and engage with non-state law.