The Emergence of the International Law Societies

1957 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irwin Abrams
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
World Politics ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Peace Movement ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Significant Expression

The history of world politics of the half century before 1914 is full of nationalist wars, imperialist conflicts, and the diplomacy of the armed peace. To the less spectacular developments of internationalism so little attention is usually paid that the League of Nations almost seems to emerge full-grown from the head of Woodrow Wilson. It is true that the dominant trend in the relations between the sovereign states was anything but pacific, and the peoples were increasingly swayed by the emotion of aggressive nationalism. At the same time the world was becoming more interdependent economically and culturally, and there was a quiet but clearly perceptible growth of international-mindedness. A significant expression of this development was the movement of ideas in the eighteen-seventies which led to the establishment of two important law societies, the Institute of International Law and the International Law Association. The story of their origins is an interesting chapter in the history of international law and throws light as well upon its relationships with the organized peace movement.

The Law of Nations in Global History

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Alexandrowicz
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Global History ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Law ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Regional Histories ◽  
International Rule

In recent years there has been a growing awareness of the need to write a global history of law of nations that disengages from parochial national and regional histories. It is hoped that these developments will bring centre-stage the work of Charles Henry Alexandrowicz (1902–75), a scholar who was among the first to conceptualize the history of international law as that of intersecting histories of different regions of the world. Alexandrowicz was aware that, while the idea of writing a global history of law of nations is liberating, there is no guarantee that it will not become the handmaiden of contemporary and future imperial projects. What were needed were critical global histories that provincialize established Eurocentric historiographies and read them alongside other regional histories. This book aims to make Alexandrowicz’s writings more widely available and read. The Introduction to this book sums up the context, issues, problems, and questions that engaged Alexandrowicz, as well as some of his central theses. His writings are a gold mine waiting to be explored. Alexandrowicz contributed to the effort of promoting the idea of international rule of law by rejecting a Eurocentric history and theory of international law.

Carl Schmitt and International Law

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martti Koskenniemi
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Doctoral Dissertation ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Legal Realism ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Theory Of Law ◽  
Concept Of Law

Carl Schmitt always presented himself and was above all a jurist. His doctoral dissertation was based on an antiformal theory of law that was also in evidence in his acerbic critics of the League of Nations and the system of control over Germany established in the Treaty of Versailles. This chapter shows that the concrete-order thinking of his later years espoused a more conventional legal realism that has always constituted an important stream of international jurisprudence. Schmitt’s main postwar work, Nomos der Erde, puts forward an influential view of the history of international law as inextricably entangled with the imperial pretensions. This chapter argues that the much-cited book, together with Schmitt’s polemical concept of law and his critiques of the discriminatory concept of war, has proven a fruitful basis for much of today’s postcolonial jurisprudence.

scholarly journals International Law as a Help or Hinderance to World Peace

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 447-459
Author(s):  
Alexander Gilder
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Review Essay ◽  
International System ◽  
World Peace ◽  
International Organisations ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Made In

Abstract World Peace (And How We Can Achieve It) looks towards a future where there is increasingly optimistic engagement with the concept of peace. Bellamy assesses why the world is the way it is before making suggestions for how the world can achieve peace. Bellamy suggests world peace is achievable and in the final chapter constructs his articles for world peace. This review essay engages with several themes in the book looking at how the history of international law is framed by the author before assessing Bellamy’s arguments in relation to the state and international organisations. Lastly, the essay casts a legal eye over the author’s articles for world peace. The articles will be of particular interest to readers in international law as they are embedded in the existing systems and structures of the prevailing international system. However, the articles contain the important inclusion of individuals and the role they play in achieving world peace. World Peace allows international lawyers to think more deeply about peace and the points made in this essay raise some issues that may be further debated as scholars map the paths to peace.

International Law’s Cabinet of Curiosities

2018 ◽  
pp. 15-29
Author(s):  
Daniel Joyce
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
International Law ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Cabinet Of Curiosities

This chapter considers the significance of objects for international law through the lens of collecting and curation. It focusses upon the history of the cabinet of curiosities (or wunderkammer) as a precursor to the modern museum. The metaphor of the cabinet of curiosities reveals the folly of international law’s ambition to represent and order the world. Interpreting and critiquing the history of international law in light of its material culture reveals its Eurocentricity and connection to empire. The chapter invites critical reflection upon the volume as a whole as a cabinet of curiosities, open to its limitations as a collection, but also offering innovation and contemporary insight through its idiosyncrasy and personal form. It concludes by considering the turn to materiality in the context of broader anxieties generated by the digital era.

The Authority of Vattel

1913 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles G. Fenwick
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Political Philosopher

There is no more significant commentary on the growth of international law, both in precision and in comprehensiveness, than an estimate of the relative authority of the name of Vattel in the world of international relations a century ago and in that of today. A century ago not even the name of Grotius himself was more potent in its influence upon questions relating to international law than that of Vattel. Vattel's treatise on the law of nations was quoted by judicial tribunals, in speeches before legislative assemblies, and in the decrees and correspondence of executive officials. It was the manual of the student, the reference work of the statesman, and the text from which the political philosopher drew inspiration. Publicists considered it sufficient to cite the authority of Vattel to justify and give conclusiveness and force to statements as to the proper conduct of a state in its international relations.At the present day the name and treatise of Vattel have both passed into the remoter field of the history of international law. It is safe to say that in no modern controversy over the existence and force of an alleged rule of international law would publicists seek to strengthen the position taken by them by quoting the authority of Vattel. As an exposition of the law of nations at a given period of its growth, the work can, it is true, lose nothing of its value, but in saying that it has thus won its place irrevocably among the classics of international law, we are merely repeating that it has lost its value as a treatise on the law of the present day.

A Short History of International Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen C Neff
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
History Of International Law

This chapter presents a brief history of international law. It proceeds chronologically, beginning with an overview of the ancient world, followed by a more detailed discussion of the great era of natural law in the European Middle Ages. The classical period (1600–1815) witnessed the emergence of a dualistic view of international law, with the law of nature and the law of nations co-existing (more or less amicably). In the nineteenth century—the least-known part of international law—doctrinaire positivism was the prevailing viewpoint, though not the exclusive one. For the inter-war years, developments both inside and outside the League of Nations are considered. The chapter concludes with some historically oriented comments on international law during the post-1945 period.

scholarly journals EL LEGADO DE LA SOCIEDAD DE NACIONES: THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND THE EMERGENCE OF INTERNATIONAL ADMINISTRATION: FINDING THE ORIGINS OF INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONAL LAW

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (71) ◽  
pp. 285-293
Author(s):  
Richard Collins
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
World War ◽  
Institutional Governance ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
First World

n contemporary reflections on the history of international law and international organization the creation of the League of Nations in the aftermath of the First World War stands as a critical dividing line between an older, pre-institutionalised era of sovereign coexistence and a modern era of cooperation, conflict resolution and institutional governance. Projecting forwards from this point, however, the legacy of the League in its somewhat short-lived existence is rather more mixed. In terms of what was clearly its primary purpose, to pacify inter-state diplomacy and put an end to the scourge of war, its overriding failure is well-known and does not need repeating here. However, in terms of the League’s contribution to the project of international organisation its contribution has been considerable and often overlooked. In fact, as Pitman Potter has claimed, the League has arguably made «a far greater contribution to the progress of international organisation than any other institution in history». Indeed, as Philippe Sands and Pierre Klein have equally commented, that it failed in its primary purpose —and, indeed, did so quite dramatically— cannot be blamed so much on its institutional design as a more profound failure of political will of those states that were tasked with making the institution work.

scholarly journals The Empire of International Law?

2019 ◽  
Vol 113 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-199
Author(s):  
Karen J. Alter
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Law School ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Sovereign Equality ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pan American ◽  
The Hague ◽  
History Of International Law

This review essay examines three intellectual histories focused on fundamental transformations of international law in the early twentieth century. Juan Pablo Scarfi's Hidden History of International Law in the Americas is most interested in debates about a Pan-American international law, meaning the idea that international law might work differently in different regions, which was debated but eventually gave way to the change that Arnulf Becker Lorca, a Lecturer in Public International Law at Georgetown Law, discusses. Becker Lorca's Mestizo International Law is most interested in how the conception that international law applied only to civilized nations transformed into the modern conception that presumes sovereign equality. The Internationalists, by Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro, respectively the Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law and the Charles F. Southmayd Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at Yale Law School, and seeks to understand how the normal (and legal) recourse to force in international relations was replaced by an international law that bans the use of force, except in self-defense. Ideas regarding these issues started to evolve in the late 1800s, but the transformative debates occurred at roughly the same time because the Hague Peace Conferences and the League of Nations allowed contestations over old versus updated understandings of international law to flourish.

scholarly journals History of International Law Since the Peace of Westphalia

1912 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amos S. Hershey
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Public Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
Relative Value ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Main Factors ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
The One

The treaties of Münster and Osnabrück gave to Europe a sort of international constitution which remained the basis of its public law down to the French Revolution. But it would be a serious error to assume that the international community of states as revealed to the world by the Peace of Westphalia implied the recognition of the science of international law as understood and practiced by the society of nations at the present time. The science of international law as it exists today is a result of slow historical growth and is the product of two main factors, viz., certain theories or principles on the one hand, and international practice or custom on the other. The relative value and influence of the contributions of each of these factors is so difficult to determine that they have never been thoroughly eifted or separated — a task left for the future historians of international law.

JAK LUDOBÓJSTWO ZOSTAŁO UZNANE ZA ZBRODNIĘ – DZIEDZICTWO RAFAŁA LEMKINA

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam MCFARLAND ◽  
Katarzyna HAMER
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Genocide Convention ◽  
Entire Life ◽  
War Crimes Trials ◽  
Criminal Charge ◽  
Short Biography ◽  
The World ◽  
Real Change ◽  
History Of

Raphael Lemkin is hardly known to a Polish audiences. One of the most honored Poles of theXX century, forever revered in the history of human rights, nominated six times for the Nobel PeacePrize, Lemkin sacrificed his entire life to make a real change in the world: the creation of the term“genocide” and making it a crime under international law. How long was his struggle to establishwhat we now take as obvious, what we now take for granted?This paper offers his short biography, showing his long road from realizing that the killing oneperson was considered a murder but that under international law in 1930s the killing a million wasnot. Through coining the term “genocide” in 1944, he helped make genocide a criminal charge atthe Nuremburg war crimes trials of Nazi leaders in late 1945, although there the crime of genocidedid not cover killing whole tribes when committed on inhabitants of the same country nor when notduring war. He next lobbied the new United Nations to adopt a resolution that genocide is a crimeunder international law, which it adopted on 11 December, 1946. Although not a U.N. delegate – hewas “Totally Unofficial,” the title of his autobiography – Lemkin then led the U.N. in creating theConvention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted 9 December, 1948.Until his death in 1958, Lemkin lobbied tirelessly to get other U.N. states to ratify the Convention.His legacy is that, as of 2015, 147 U.N. states have done so, 46 still on hold. His tomb inscriptionreads simply, “Dr. Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959), Father of the Genocide Convention”. Without himthe world as we know it, would not be possible.

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