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Like the pirate and the slaver before him, contemporary humanitarian law judges the war criminal as hostis humani generis, an enemy of all mankind subject to universal punishment. However, current accounts of the grounds of that judgment are unclear as to whether the criminal responsibility of perpetrators derives from their breach of law or moral values. Using the work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan together with an analysis of contemporary humanitarian law, I argue that Lacan?s model of war crimes permits the development of a more persuasive conception of humanitarian crimes. Drawing on this model, I argue that it is necessary to shift from a focus upon the person of the war criminal to the criminality of their actions. This shift involves understanding the perpetrator?s actions in terms of a breach of the social relation owed to an other. Following Lacan?s analysis of crimes as symbolic acts, I argue that the war crime is an act which refuses to recognize social ties to others. This conception of war crimes in turn leads to a new model of humanitarian law which conceives justice as the re-institution of a socio-symbolic relation to another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]