Judicial Reconstruction and the Rule of Law ─ Reassessing Military Intervention in Iraq and Beyond

Lewis (a legal officer in the Royal Australian Navy) critically engages the concept of the "rule of law" in the context of military interventions conducted under the law of occupation or by authority of the United Nations Security Council. She first considers how the rule of law is understood in various theoretical perspectives and in international human rights law. She then examines how the rule of law was treated in state and international authority practices during the German and Japanese occupations of the Second World War, Allied occupations of Germany and Japan at the end of the Second World War, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, the US occupation of Iraq, and UN transition authorities in East Timor and Kosovo. She is critical of the demands for uniform right-based institutions for the rule of law, arguing that their imposition by foreign intervention contradicts longstanding principles of state sovereignty and self-determination among peoples and serves more as a means to promote the institutions of "free market democracy" than the independent value of the rule of law. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Angeline Lewis, SJD (2010) in international law, Australian National University, is a Legal Officer in the Royal Australian Navy. Drawing on her experience in Iraq, she has written several works in her personal capacity on the role of the ‘rule of law’ in military operations.