{"id":1720,"date":"2006-06-01T09:04:25","date_gmt":"2006-06-01T13:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/site\/?p=1720"},"modified":"2011-03-09T11:52:53","modified_gmt":"2011-03-09T15:52:53","slug":"issue_47-2_patterson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/2006\/06\/issue_47-2_patterson\/","title":{"rendered":"Who\u2019s Got the Title? or, The Remnants of Debellatio in Post-Invasion Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Introduction<\/strong><\/span>*<\/p>\n<p>The  invasion of Iraq by the British and U.S.-led Coalition forces in March  2003 silently effected debellatio, the ancient doctrine by which a  military victor takes title to territory in which the defeated  government has ceased to function. The Coalition governments\u2019 failure to  recognize it as such and to invoke the attendant legal consequences  enabled destructive chaos on the ground and created a troubling  precedent for the application of international law to any future  exercise of one sovereign state\u2019s authority within the geographical  boundaries of another sovereign state. The Coalition forces ostensibly  acted pursuant to the international law of occupation, but the legal  framework ultimately agreed upon and actually utilized in post-invasion  Iraq more closely resembles debellatio. Though this doctrine  traditionally is associated with conquest and annexation, it need not  be; as updated by modern ideas of self-determination and what I call  \u201csovereign identity,\u201d it is in fact the extant doctrine most consistent  with the factual and legal situation caused by the invasion.<\/p>\n<p>In  what was perhaps an understandable bid to constrain U.S. and British  power, the United Nations labeled the Coalition \u201coccupying powers,\u201d  thereby invoking the body of international occupation law traditionally  applicable only to foreign authorities assuming \u201ctemporary managerial  powers\u201d over another sovereign\u2019s territory during which \u201climited period\u201d  the foreign force may not \u201cbring about by itself a valid transfer of  authority.\u201d The application of this body of law to the Coalition  presence in Iraq was a poor choice, however, given the Coalition\u2019s  nation-building aspirations and may have stemmed in part from a  perceived unavailability of any other plausible body of international  law, given scholarly assertions that debellatio, the international legal  doctrine that best fits the factual and legal situations existing after  the Coalition\u2019s invasion, was defunct. This Note argues that occupation  law is fundamentally inconsistent with the Coalition\u2019s post-invasion  exercise of power within Iraq and that, as contextualized within the  modern regime of human rights law, a modern doctrine of debellatio much  better comports with the Coalition\u2019s authority in post-invasion Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>In  Part I of this Note, I explain why occupation law is poorly tailored to  nation-building and highlight some of the consequences of its  application in Iraq for the occupiers, the occupied, and the evolution  of occupation doctrine. In Part II, I make a case for the legal  viability of a modern doctrine of debellatio consistent with both the  right of a people to self-determination and the idea that sovereignty  may not be taken by force. In Part III, I argue that the legal framework  under which the Coalition Provisional Authority (\u201cCPA\u201d) actually  operated through the chaotic post-invasion phase that created further  divisions among the Iraqi people is something more than traditional  occupation law but something much less than the ancient tradition of  annexation via debellatio; it is a legal framework best supported by a  modern doctrine of debellatio that allows the occupier to take  contingent, temporary title to the territory in which the vanquished  government formerly operated. Finally, in Part IV, I outline the  advantages of acknowledging a modern doctrine of debellatio.<\/p>\n<p><em>* This excerpt does not include citations.  To read the entire article, including supporting notes, please download  the PDF.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The invasion of Iraq by the British and U.S.-led Coalition forces in March 2003 silently effected debellatio, the ancient doctrine by which a military victor takes title to territory in which the defeated government has ceased to function. The Coalition governments\u2019 failure to recognize it as such and to invoke the attendant legal consequences enabled destructive chaos on the ground and created a troubling precedent for the application of international law to any future exercise of one sovereign state\u2019s authority within the geographical boundaries of another sovereign state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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