19. International law

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Reus-Smit
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Real Effect ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Neoliberal Institutionalism

This chapter examines debates surrounding the nature and efficacy of modern international law. It begins by discussing the reasons why international societies construct institutions, and why different sorts of institutions have emerged in different historical contexts. It then considers the nature and origins of the modern institution of international law, its relationship with the practice of multilateralism, and the recent cosmopolitanization of the global legal order. It also explores the laws of war and concludes with an overview of different theoretical approaches to international law such as realism, neoliberal institutionalism, and constructivism. Two case studies are presented: the first is about whether international law is an expression of Western dominance and the second is about individual criminal accountability in non-Western countries. There is also an Opposing Opinions box that asks whether international law has any real effect on the nature and conduct of international relations.

19. International law

2019 ◽  
pp. 303-318
Author(s):  
Christian Reus-Smit
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Real Effect ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Neoliberal Institutionalism

This chapter examines debates surrounding the nature and efficacy of modern international law. It begins by discussing the reasons why international societies construct institutions, and why different sorts of institutions have emerged in different historical contexts. It then considers the nature and origins of the modern institution of international law, its relationship with the practice of multilateralism, and the recent cosmopolitanization of the global legal order. It also explores the laws of war and concludes with an overview of different theoretical approaches to international law such as realism, neoliberal institutionalism, and constructivism. Two case studies are presented: the first is about whether international law is an expression of Western dominance and the second is about individual criminal accountability in non-Western countries. There is also an Opposing Opinions box that asks whether international law has any real effect on the nature and conduct of international relations.

scholarly journals INTERNATIONAL LEGAL ORDER: ON THE ISSUE OF ITS PROPERTIES (THEORETICAL ASPECTS)

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (127) ◽  
pp. 115-122
Author(s):  
I. Zabara
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
General Context ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Ability To Act ◽  
The Status ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Internal And External Factors

The article deals with one of the theoretical aspects of international legal order issues – the question of its properties. The author summarizes the doctrinal views of international law and regards the basic properties of the phenomenon of international legal order as its ability to act as system complexity, dynamism, orderliness, the reality and legitimacy of actions of subjects. The author notes that there is a common position in the doctrine, according to which the international legal order is a system. However, he notes that the difference in views on the international legal order as a system consists in the components the researchers include in its composition; the author examines two theoretical approaches. The complexity of the international legal order is determined from the standpoint of the number of its elements and components, as well as the number of their connections. This opinion highlights the fact that the predominant role is played by the quantity of links between elements and components, and indicates the international legal order capacity for permanent changes under the influence of the relevant internal and external factors. The dynamism of the international legal order is characterized from the point of capacity for the development and modification. It is stated that the state of the dynamics is effected by several circumstances. The author concludes that this international legal order’s property as a dynamism is one of the qualities that characterizes its condition as a system. The orderliness of the international legal order is considered from a consistency point, the interaction of parts of the whole, due to its structure. The author notes that the ordering of the international legal order displays its internal relationships and emphasizes its status as a system. The reality of the international legal order is characterized from the point of objectively existing phenomenon. The author concludes that the allocation of the international legal order of reality as one of its properties is intended to emphasize the status of one of its most important components - the state of international relations. Separately, the author considers the question of the legality of actions of subjects of international law, which are discussed in the doctrine from the standpoint of the conditions necessary for its maintenance. The author points out that in the general context of the properties that characterize the international legal order, it can be considered as an aspect wich together with other characterizes the state of the international legal order.

Part I Introduction, Ch.3 The Law and Politics of International Organizations

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dunoff Jeffrey L
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
The Political ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Institutional Fragmentation

This chapter describes the contours of the international law (IL) and international relations (IR) scholarship on international organizations (IOs), as well as some of its key characteristics and debates. It proceeds in three parts. Part I briefly surveys the major theoretical approaches to the creation and functions of IOs found in the IL and IR literature. Part II analyzes the most important conceptual debates that have occupied IO scholars in recent years, including debates over the autonomy, accountability, and legitimacy of IOs. Part III explores a cluster of policy dilemmas, including the political implications of institutional fragmentation, how to manage IO interactions, and why IOs increasingly seem unable to effectively address matters of pressing international concern.

International Relations Theory, International Law, and the Regime Governing Atrocities in Internal Conflicts

1999 ◽  
Vol 93 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth W. Abbott
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Internal Conflicts ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Cross Fertilization

Over the last ten years, international relations (IR) theory, a branch of political science, has animated some of the most exciting scholarship in international law.1 If a true joint discipline has not yet emerged,2 scholars in both fields have clearly established the value of interdisciplinary cross-fertilization. Yet IR—like international law—comprises several distinct theoretical approaches or “methods.” While this complexity makes interactions between the disciplines especially rich, it also makes them difficult to explore concisely. This essay thus constitutes something of a minisymposium in itself: it summarizes the four principal schools of IR theory—conventionally identified as “realist,” “institutionalist,” “liberal” and “constructivist”—and then applies them to the norms and institutions governing serious violations of human dignity during internal conflicts (the “atrocities regime”).

Nuclear Proliferation and Non-Proliferation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacques E.C. Hymans
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Nuclear Proliferation ◽  
Nuclear Explosive ◽  
Comparative Case Studies ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Neoliberal Institutionalism

Nuclear proliferation became an increasingly major concern after France and then China joined the nuclear “club” in the 1960s. However, it was not until India’s “peaceful nuclear explosive” test of 1974 that a real sense of potential worldwide crisis emerged, which also spawned a substantial amount of serious writing on the issue. The basic puzzle facing the study of nuclear proliferation is why there is a considerable and persistent disparity between the number of nuclear weapons-capable states and the number of actual nuclear weapons states. Three early works that represented crucial conceptual breakthroughs in the struggle toward a proper descriptive inference of the dynamics of proliferation are William Epstein’s The Last Chance (1976), Stephen M. Meyer’s The Dynamics of Nuclear Proliferation (1984), and Opaque Nuclear Proliferation (1991), edited by Benjamin Frankel. More contemporary political science work features attempts by each of the major international relations paradigms to tackle the proliferation puzzle: realism, psychological constructivism, neoliberal institutionalism, liberalism, and sociological constructivism. While scholars disagree over a host of issues, a consensus on the dynamics of nuclear proliferation may be discerned. In particular, there are five points on which most recent works converge: that proliferation has been historically rare; that we cannot take the demand for nuclear weapons for granted; that domestic politics and identity considerations play a crucial role in shaping proliferation choices; and that theory-guided, in-depth comparative case studies are the most appropriate means of advancing the state of our knowledge at this point in time.

scholarly journals 2000–2020: twenty years later, where are we in terms of the unity of international law?

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-23
Author(s):  
Pierre-Marie Dupuy
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
The Hague ◽  
Peremptory Norms ◽  
International Rule

Twenty years have passed since the author's delivery in 2000 of the general course of public international law at the Hague Academy of International Law, titled ‘The Unity of the International Legal Order’. That course was designed to combat the all-too-common idea that international law was in the process of ‘fragmentation’. It did so by developing a theory focused on the existence of and tension between two forms of unity in the international legal order: the formal unity (concerning the procedures by which primary norms are created and interpreted, and their non-compliance adjudicated) and the material unity (based on the content of certain norms of general international law, peremptory norms). Twenty years later, the time is ripe to revisit this theory to determine the extent to which it is still valid as a framework for the analysis of international law, particularly as an increasing number of ‘populist’ leaders very much seem to ignore, or voluntarily deny, the validity of some of the key substantial principles on which the international legal order was re-founded within and around the United Nations in 1945. When confronted with the factual reality of the present state of international relations as well as with the evolution of the law, one can conclude that the validity of the unity of the international legal order is unfailingly maintained, and that its role in upholding the international rule of law is more important now than ever.

International Legal Order as an Idea

1979 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Greenwood Onuf
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International Order ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Vanishing Point ◽  
Theoretical Interest ◽  
International Legal Order

International law, its masters tell us, is “the vanishing point of jurisprudence.” So must be international politics, and all of international relations, for political theory. The recurrent and directing theme in political theory is the problem of order—how it is provided, maintained, altered, and so on. Order resides in orderly relations, that is, patterned and predictable relations, among people, but is abstracted from those relations as any arrangement of norms and institutions that distributes values among people. Among peoples, political theorists favor the alternative premise that anarchy, not order, reigns. By not existing, international order needs no explaining. Evidence to the contrary can be explained away as anomalous or ephemeral, and therefore not of theoretical interest. From this follows the dominance of concern for conflict and disorder and the paucity of theory in the study of international politics.

Saving the International Justice Regime

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtney Hillebrecht
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
International Justice ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
International Courts ◽  
International Human

While resistance to international courts is not new, what is new, or at least newly conceptualized, is the politics of backlash against these institutions. Saving the International Justice Regime: Beyond Backlash against International Courts is at the forefront of this new conceptualization of backlash politics. It brings together theories, concepts and methods from the fields of international law, international relations, human rights and political science and case studies from around the globe to pose - and answer - three questions related to backlash against international courts: What is backlash and what forms does it take? Why do states and elites engage in backlash against international human rights and criminal courts? What can stakeholders and supporters of international justice do to meet these contemporary challenges?

On the Foundations of International Law

1945 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-243
Author(s):  
John P. Humphrey
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Brute Force ◽  
The World ◽  
European System ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
Independent States ◽  
Potential Enemy

Since the collapse of the European system of the Middle Ages and the birth of modem international law most jurists have worked on the assumption that the principles underlying the international legal order are radically different from those that lie at the base of national law. With the disintegration of the authority of the Pope and the Emperor there had come into being a number of independent states that recognized no political superior and hence considered themselves as equals. In their relations with each other, at least, these states acted like the sovereign bodies which in fact they were. In so far as international relations were concerned the world had returned to a condition of complete anarchy. The states of the world lived in that condition of natural equality described by Hobbes where each was the potential enemy of every other. In the formulation of their policies and in their acts each state took into account its own interests only and when these interests came into conflict, as they inevitably did, the only arbiter was brute force.

scholarly journals After fragmentation: Norm collisions, interface conflicts, and conflict management

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTIAN KREUDER-SONNEN ◽  
MICHAEL ZÜRN
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Conflict Management ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Norms ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Institutional Pluralism ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Institutional Order

AbstractFragmentation, institutional overlaps, and norm collisions are often seen as fundamental problems for the global (legal) order. Supposedly, they incite conflict and disorder. However, some scholars have also emphasised functional and normative advantages of the resulting institutional pluralism. We argue that the consequences of the increasing international institutional density are conditional on whether and how different norms, institutions, and authorities are coordinated. In distinction from the fragmentation framework in international law and the regime complexity framework in international relations, this introduction outlines an interface conflict framework that enables important insights into this question and guides the contributions assembled in this issue. It zooms in on the micro-level of conflict between actors that justify incompatible positional differences with reference to different international norms. In particular, the concept of interface conflicts allows studying the conditions under which overlaps and norm collisions become activated in conflicts as well as the ways in which such conflicts are handled. Foreshadowing the main findings of the contributions to this Special Issue, we hold that interface conflicts are neither inevitable nor unmanageable. Most importantly, it seems that, more often than not, conflicts stimulate cooperative forms of management and contribute to the building of inter-institutional order.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document