The Law of the Nations as the Civil Law of the World

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Volk
Keyword(s):  
Civil Law ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Individual State ◽  
Global Ethics ◽  
Specific Kind ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The World ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
The Law ◽  
Political Thinker

This chapter points out that Montesquieu argues in favour of a specific kind of political cosmopolitanism. For him, the law of nations appears as the civil law of the whole world. Essentially, it can be said that Montesquieu conceives of a law of nations that attempts to avert both the exploitation of other communities and also slavery. At the same time, however, he is not concerned with equating the law of nations with global ethics, or with establishing morally substantial yet politically ineffective obligatory requirements. Montesquieu tries to remain a political thinker who assumes the reality of individual state interests, but who wishes to integrate these in an international legal order that represents more than the consensus between states.

The Development of International Law Since the War

1928 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 330-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manley O. Hudson
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
The Law ◽  
Made In

We are now approaching the end of the first decade following the World War. Perhaps we are sufficiently removed from the heat and passion of that struggle to attempt to gauge the progress which the world has made in the development of international law since it was ended. Ten years is a brief period in any field of history; but before this decade was begun, most of us felt that it was going to see great things accomplished toward broadening and strengthening and extending the law by which the relations of states are governed. The war brought a challenge to our international legal order which could hardly have failed to create for our generation an opportunity to leave an impression on international law, such as has been left by no other generation in the three hundred years since the time of Grotius. As the decade is ending, and as our generation begins to find its energies so absorbed in other tasks, an appraisal of the progress we have achieved may enable us to judge the use we have made of our opportunity and the extent to which it still exists.

Early “Italian” Scholars of Ius Gentium

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-47
Author(s):  
Claudia Storti
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Shared Set ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
The Law ◽  
Ius Gentium

Between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries several issues led jurists to rethink the international legal order established in the Roman Empire and the Early Middle Ages. The first was the need to update the list of the law of nations legitimate subjects after the birth of the commune that had not been accounted for in Roman-law sources. The second was to recreate a superior and universally shared set of ‘public’ law rules for international relations to counteract the tendency of communal and monarchical governments to consider the law inter gentes as a form of internal law. In order to address this issue Bartolus of Sassoferrato adapted the Roman category of ius gentium to the features of the medieval geopolitical context. Other topics focused on defining the enemy, freedom of peoples, and treaties among unequal subjects, while the theory of ius gentium of Alberico Gentili was fully rooted in the medieval and early modern legal tradition.

The Law of War and its Many Distinctions

2019 ◽  
pp. 201-250
Author(s):  
George P. Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Rome Statute ◽  
General Structure ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
International Perspective ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Law Of War ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
Police Action ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Mind

This chapter focuses on the law of war and its many distinctions. The supreme distinction in this book is between lawful and unlawful. However, in the law of war, the distinctions multiply beyond control. Whether troops fighting abroad constitutes war is itself a disputed question; there has been a tendency in recent years to use “armed conflict” or “police action.” For the purposes of analyzing the Rome Statute and, in particular, Article 8 on war crimes, one has to assume an international perspective. Most countries in the international legal order are not democracies, and the internal allocation of power is not relevant to whether they violate Article 8. The complexity of Article 8 challenges the mind, with at least 50 distinct offenses. The chapter then elaborates on the perspectives necessary to grasp the general structure of war crimes in the international legal order.

Kelsen’s Enemies

2021 ◽  
pp. 8-35
Author(s):  
Robert Schuett
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
Pure Theory ◽  
White Sand ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
Theory Of Law ◽  
The Many ◽  
Political Thinker

Why is Kelsen such a consequential and controversial, perhaps even misunderstood, political thinker and actor? Who wants to make us believe that Kelsen was a naïve idealist dreaming up a Kantian peace and throwing white sand at battle cruisers? The chapter is a rebuttal of the many clichés propounded by Schmittians and the other pseudo-realists that are thrown at Kelsen and the project of a Pure theory of law, state, and international legal order. The fact that the FBI was after Kelsen as an alleged communist is as ridiculous as it is tragic, and even two of his own students, Hans J. Morgenthau and John H. Herz, did not seem to understand legal positivism’s cold analysis of political and international life. The same goes for the fact that Kelsen was, actually, a tough Freudian human nature realist who turned the tables on natural law ideologues. Who’s naïve now?

Part III Themes, Ch.18 Australia in the International Order

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlesworth Hilary
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
International Standards ◽  
Institution Building ◽  
International Institution ◽  
The World ◽  
Full Picture ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter offers an account of Australia's engagement with the international legal order, through different aspects of the relationship: designing international institutions, litigating in the World Court, and implementing international standards. These are only fragments of the full picture, but they illustrate both Australia's embrace of and distancing from the international legal order. Australia's relationship with the international legal order overall is marked by a deep strand of ambivalence. It has played both the part of a good international citizen as well as that of an international exceptionalist. In some fields, Australia has engaged creatively in international institution-building, even if with a wary eye to protect certain Australian interests. In other areas, particularly human rights, the relationship is distinctly uneasy, with Australia appearing to believe that international standards should regulate others and that it is somehow above scrutiny.

The Puritan Cosmopolis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nan Goodman
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Law And Literature ◽  
Significant Relation ◽  
Trade Routes ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The World ◽  
The Law

This book traces the emergence of a sense of kinship with and belonging to a larger, more inclusive world within the law and literature of late seventeenth-century Puritanism. Connected to this cosmopolitanism in part through travel, trade, and politics, late seventeenth-century Puritans, it is argued, were also thinking in terms that went beyond these parameters about what it meant to feel affiliated with people in remote places—of which the Ottoman Empire is the best, but not the only example—and to experience what Bruce Robbins calls “attachment at a distance.” In this way Puritan writers and readers were not simply learning about others but also cultivating an awareness of themselves as “stand[ing] in an ethically significant relation” to people all around the world. The underlying source of these cosmopolitan predilections was the law, specifically the law of nations, often considered the precursor to international law. Through the terms for sovereignty, obligation, and society made available by a turn toward the cosmopolitan within the law, the Puritans experimented with concepts of extended obligation and ideas about a society consisting of all humans, not just those living on certain trade routes or within certain foreign communities. In mapping out these thought experiments, The Puritan Cosmopolis uncovers Puritans who were reconceptualizing war, contemplating new ways of cultivating peace, and rewriting the rules for being Puritan by internalizing legal theories about living in a larger, more inclusive world.

United States v. Dire

2013 ◽  
Vol 107 (3) ◽  
pp. 644-649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene Kontorovich
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Crime ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
Court Of Appeals ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The World ◽  
Treaty Law ◽  
The Law ◽  
The U.S

In the first criminal piracy decision by a United States court in nearly a century, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that the federal piracy statute’s reference to the “law of nations” explicitly ties the scope of the offense to evolving customary international law definitions of the crime. The court went on to find that under current customary and treaty law, attempted piracy falls within the scope of the international crime. In doing so, it joined several courts in nations around the world that have confronted the issue as a result of the outbreak of Somali piracy that began in 2008.

Part III Observance and Application of Treaties, 14 Treaties Establishing Objective Regimes

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salerno Francesco
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Vienna Convention ◽  
Principle Of Relativity ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
The Law

The issue of treaties establishing objective regimes has been neglected by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Building on the principle of relativity of treaties, the Convention only deals with the effects of specific treaty rules on third states. This chapter argues that third states never acquire the same status of states parties, even when they consent to the specific treaty rules that affect them. Analysing the significance of treaties establishing objective regimes under general international law, it clarifies that such treaties may affect third states even when they do not embody rules of customary law. Due to the relevance for the international legal order of the unique erga omnes regime created by the treaty, the situation regulated by it can no longer fall within the scope of the absolute ‘freedom’ previously accorded to third states.

6. Domicile, nationality, and habitual residence

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hill
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
International Agreement ◽  
Habitual Residence ◽  
Choice Of Law ◽  
The World ◽  
Permanent Home ◽  
English Law ◽  
The Law ◽  
Personal Law

The object of jurisdictional rules is to determine an appropriate forum and choice of law rules are designed to lead to the application of the most appropriate law, the law that generally the parties might reasonably expect to apply. The test for recognition of foreign judgments is not dissimilar. A judgment granted by an appropriate forum should normally be recognised. The problem is one of ascertaining the connecting factor (or factors) which would best satisfy the criterion of appropriateness. With regards to personal connecting factors, there is little international agreement as to the appropriate test of ‘belonging’. In England and most common law countries, the traditional personal connecting factor is domicile, which loosely translates as a person's permanent home. One of the problems here is that domicile is a connecting factor which is interpreted differently in various parts of the world. In contrast, most of continental Europe and other civil law countries have traditionally used nationality as the basic connecting factor, especially for choice of law purposes; the personal law is the law of the country of which the person is a citizen. In some countries, including England, another connecting factor, habitual residence, has emerged. This is increasingly being used for the purposes of jurisdiction rules and in the law relating to recognition of foreign judgments. This chapter examines each of these personal connecting factors. Primary emphasis is laid on domicile and habitual residence as the two main connecting factors employed by English law.

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