9 - Revisiting Rainbow Warrior

Summary

In the burgeoning realm of global governance, ethics has occupied an increasingly prominent place in recent years. One of the buzzwords of the last two decades or so has been ‘accountability’, a term which carries overtones of proper behaviour, control and responsibility. Persons in a position of leadership emphasize their concern for such things as full financial disclosure and transparency. The humanitarian intervention over Kosovo may have been illegal but was nonetheless, many have claimed, ethically justifiable. Codes of ethics have been devised both for the international bar and, somewhat lukewarm, for the international judiciary. The infamous ‘torture memos’ have thrown into perspective the need for legal advisors to behave ethically; writings have appeared on the ethical aspects of humanitarian missions, and several studies have been published focusing on the ethics of the international legal order as such, the ethics of international commercial arbitration, or the ethics of the international bar.