Just War theory has long held a relationship with the laws of war. The legalization of international affairs, a phenomenon identified in much institutionalist and constructivist IR scholarship, appears to have further cemented this relationship. States, and other actors, readily resort to the language of humanitarian and human rights law to justify coercive acts including preventative self-defence and humanitarian intervention. This paper explores the normative challenges that the legalization of warfare exposes arguing that this process, as it is unfolding in contemporary international society, undermines the relationship between in bello and ad bellum constraints on the use of force and reduces the critical power of law and ethics to limit the occurrence of war
