‘Wanted Dead or Alive’: The Outlaw in Modern War

Abstract

This article examines a little noticed prohibition on outlawry contained in some military manuals on the laws of war and asks where it came from. It establishes that it is not contained in a treaty or in customary law but originated in the Lieber Code published in 1863 by the U.S. Government. By following the development of the prohibition and other restrictions on the methods of combat, it identifies an overlap with treaty restrictions on perfidy but also that modern allusions to enemies as outlaws ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’ continue in some concerning ways.