Ville Kari
In anticipation of my forthcoming monograph The Classical Doctrine of Civil War in International Law (Cambridge University Press 2026), Doctors’ Commons International is proud to publish here its related unofficial companion, A Digest of the Classical Law of Civil War. You may download the PDF via this link:
I wrote the Digest originally as an appendix to my doctoral thesis on the classical doctrine of civil war, which I defended at the University of Helsinki in 2020. The Digest started off as a notebook of normative citations, rules, cases and principles from various sources from across the centuries. As my work progressed, I began to separate my historical-legal narrative from the rules-specific findings of my research, until I finally compiled my legal notes in the shape of the Digest.
The Digest is an illogical mess of rules and arguments, but a very useful one at that. It presents in raw citations, organised in a somewhat coherent pattern, a collection of contradictory, often diametrically opposite views from authors from radically different time periods. Its purpose is purely instructive in an academic and legal sense; it is a box of raw material for legal arguments and a collection of references and links for scholars interested in looking where the research took me. It is the distillation of a lot of work, and I am proud and pleased to share it with anyone who wishes to have a look.
The Digest was produced many years ago, in the middle of a long research process. The reader will therefore find many more references and perspectives in the forthcoming book.
