Technologies of Decision Support and Proportionality in International Humanitarian Law

What is it about?

In law, proportionality norms put ends in relation to the means used to reach them. What does proportionality reasoning mean for decision support in the laws of war? First look at legal commentaries on proportionality in the laws of war as an analogue form of decision support. Over time, proportionality has changed from being merely a rule-specific space for discretionary decision making to a much broader compromise-seeking within boundaries marked by law. Today, proportionality has positioned itself as a master norm in IHL, remaking rules by stealth. As a master norm, it enables the accommodation of novel master technologies as lawful. Artificially Intelligence (AI) support for military decision making is one such master technology that resonates particularly well with the inner structure of proportionality thinking: both build on cost-benefit analysis and engender the quantification of the world through data collection.

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