Soldiers of the Law: How Military Lawyers Made Law Useful to War

Abstract

International Humanitarian Law (IHL) seeks to restrain violence in war, yet its influence depends not primarily on codification or formal commitment, but on how legal judgment becomes embedded within military institutions. This article examines how IHL became operationally consequential in the United States military through a process of institutional translation. Drawing on new institutionalist perspectives, it traces how Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps officers secured sustained access to command decision-making by rendering humanitarian norms operationally intelligible and strategically relevant. Across four historical episodes—from the postwar creation of an independent JAG Corps, through Vietnam and Grenada, to the consolidation of Operational Law in the Gulf War and its subsequent strain in counterterrorism operations—the article shows how legal expertise became embedded within planning cycles, targeting processes, and rules of engagement. This institutionalization produced a structural paradox: IHL gained unprecedented influence by becoming useful to military strategy, yet that very usefulness reshaped the meaning of restraint within strategic decision-making. The article argues that law’s influence in war is conditional and institutionally mediated: the pathway that makes legal norms consequential also exposes their humanitarian content to strategic redirection.