On Command

By reference to the Lieber Code and other sources, this essay emphasizes the history of responsibility underlying the doctrine of command responsibility, and further criticizes developments that seem to have intermingled that doctrine with what are called “modes of liability. The essay urges that consideration of commander responsibility stand apart from other such “modes,” and cautions against a jurisprudence that raises the risk that, before fora like the International Criminal Court, no one can be held to account. It appears in a symposium issue exploring a 2020 Cambridge University Press book by Darryl Robinson, Justice in Extreme Cases: Criminal Law Theory Meets International Criminal Law