Appeal judges will rule on the Government's challenge to a court decision that British soldiers can be covered by human rights laws while on the battlefield.
The Court of Appeal in London has been urged to overturn a High Court decision in April last year that sending soldiers out on patrol or into battle with defective equipment could amount to a breach of their human rights.
The case was originally brought by the Ministry of Defence over comments made by a coroner after an inquest on a Territorial Army soldier, Private Jason Smith, 32, who died of heatstroke in Iraq in 2003.
Andrew Walker, the assistant deputy coroner of Oxfordshire, recorded at his inquest in November 2006 that Pte Smith's death was caused "by a serious failure to recognise and take appropriate steps to address the difficulty that he had in adjusting to the climate".
The MoD conceded that Pte Smith was within the jurisdiction of Europe for human rights purposes because he died while in hospital at a UK base in Iraq.
But government lawyers challenged Mr Justice Collins's ruling on an issue of general principle - that members of the armed forces always remained within the jurisdiction of the UK for the purposes of the European Convention on Human Rights when operating abroad.
They argued that the judge made a mistake in assuming that a state might be in breach of its human rights obligations if it could have taken steps to avoid or minimise a known risk to life but did not do so.
While it was not disputed that a state had a general responsibility for the well-being of its armed forces, to suggest that it might be in breach of human rights obligations on each occasion that it did not provide a soldier with optimal equipment would impose a "wholly unreasonable and disproportionate obligation", it was contended.
