Proceedings of the 3d International Military Justice Forum

Gwenaël Guyon, Evert Kleynhans, Anna la Grange, Sonja Els, Mariella Terzoli, (eds), Military Justice: Historical Perspectives and Contemporary Developments (RIDP, Libri 15, 2026), now available here. Here is the Preface (by the Editor of this blog):

There is, in English, an old saying that ‘the third time is the charm’. So it is with the International Military Justice Forum, the third iteration of which was held in Paris in 2025. Building on the first two, which were held in Paris in 2021 and Stellenbosch, South Africa, in 2023, the third demonstrated even more compellingly the need for a regular international gathering of experts in both the history of military justice and the issues arising from contemporary state practice in this important field. The third forum also set the stage for the next one, which will be held in London in 2027. All of the forums have been the result of selfless teamwork between scholars at St. Cyr and elsewhere.

The presentations reproduced in this volume of the International Review of Criminal Law reflect a broad range of interests and perspectives and put on display the robust nature of debate surrounding the issues explored at the sessions. Importantly, this is not a choir that sings in unison or expresses a ‘party line’. Some of the contributions generated a good deal of heat, while others covered less controversial ground. Which of the contributions that follow falls in which of these categories I will leave for the reader to speculate on.

The International Military Justice Forum helps to fill a void in contemporary scholarship. While the Law of Armed Conflict receives a great deal of attention in the literature and through professional meetings sponsored by, among others, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Society for Military Law and the Law of War (including its national groups, some of which are remarkably active), military justice itself merits greater attention. And it is getting that attention, not only through the International Military Justice Forum, but also through such recent and very welcome developments as the creation of the Forces Law Review and the Commonwealth’s Military Justice Principles and the related Model Law on Military Justice for Smaller Armed Forces. That particular project is among those discussed in the current volume, and, as a non-Commonwealth advisor, it gives me great pleasure to report that the Law Ministers meeting in Fiji has endorsed these groundbreaking efforts.

As for history, I will also note the recent French decision to promote Alfred Dreyfus, who figured in perhaps the most famous court-martial of all time, to the rank of brigadier general—sadly, long after this death. That action dramatically shows how the past and present remain closely linked in the field of military justice.

Much remains to be done, and as you read the papers assembled here, I hope you will think about military justice issues and areas that particularly merit further consideration. What challenges will emerge from events like the conflicts in eastern Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere? Will the Commonwealth Principles and Model Law spark renewed interest in military justice reform in non-Commonwealth countries? Are the Decaux Principles and related Yale Draft dead, or may we hope that they too will attract new interest? Or, given the current struggle between democratic and autocratic forces playing out in so many places around the world lead to new challenges. Will hard-fought reforms, such as those enacted in the United States in restricting the power of commanders to decide who shall be prosecuted for what, be built upon or unraveled? No one has a crystal ball, but the combination of historical and contemporary scholarship presented in Paris in 2025 cannot help but inform future developments.