Legal History as a Source of International Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Kolb
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Structural Effects ◽  
Material Source

This chapter examines to what extent ‘history’ can be considered a source of international law. It argues, in a classical way, that history is a material source of international law, though the chapter also examines some norms of positive international law which refer to historical facts. It first casts the question of history as a source of international law in its historical context. Classical international law, with its much greater emphasis on history as a factor of account, stands to by analysed, with reasons for the differences with today investigated. Hereafter, the chapter attends to the main expressions of ‘history as a source’ in the positive international law of today. Finally, the chapter considers the structural effects of historical facts and arguments on the interpreter.

Concepción Arenal and the place of women in modern international law

2020 ◽  
Vol 88 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 211-253
Author(s):  
Ignacio de la Rasilla
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
International Congress ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Individual Contributions ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Academic Study

Summary This article examines the long-forgotten first book-length treatise on international law ever published by a woman in the history of international law. The first part places Concepción Arenal’s Ensayo sobre el Derecho de gentes (1879) in the historical context of the dawn of the international legal codification movement and the professionalisation of the academic study of international law. The second part surveys the scattered treatment that women as objects of international law and women’s individual contributions to international law received in international law histories up to the early twentieth century. It then draws many parallels between Arenal’s work and the influential resolutions of the first International Congress of Women in 1915 and surveys related developments during the interwar years. The conclusion highlights the need of readdressing the invisibility of women in international legal history.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Pablo Kalmanovitz
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
The Law

The Introduction situates the book within current debates in the historiography of international law. While the book’s sources are examined in their historical context, contextualist approaches to intellectual history can emphasize to different degrees theoretical or historical dimensions. This book largely emphasizes the former. Relatedly, contextualist legal history can be purely historical or used as an instrument of critique of the present. By helping to reveal the various interests that go into the making of legal norms and vocabularies, and by showing from the outside the legitimizing function of legal norms, legal history can unsettle contemporary understandings of the law. However, when instrumentalized as critique, intellectual history risks focusing excessively on the present and become anachronistic.

Great Britain, International Law, and the Evolution of Maritime Strategic Thought, 1856–1914

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela A. Frei
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
International Law ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Maritime Law ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
State Practice ◽  
Sea Power ◽  
Maritime Strategy ◽  
Strategic Thought

The book addresses the interaction between international maritime law and maritime strategy in a historical context, arguing that both international law and maritime strategy are based on long-term state interests. Great Britain as the predominant sea power in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries shaped the relationship between international law and maritime strategy like no other power. The book explores how Great Britain used international maritime law as an instrument of foreign policy to protect its strategic and economic interests, and how maritime strategic thought evolved in parallel to the development of international legal norms. The book offers an analysis of British state practice as well as an examination of the efforts of the international community to codify international maritime law in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As the predominant sea power and also the world’s largest carrier of goods, Great Britain had to balance its interests as both a belligerent and a neutral power. With the growing importance of international law in international politics, the book examines the role of international lawyers, strategists, and government officials who shaped state practice. Great Britain’s neutrality for most of the period between 1856 and 1914 influenced its state practice and its perceptions of a future maritime conflict. Yet, the codification of international maritime law at The Hague and London conferences at the beginning of the twentieth century demanded a reassessment of Great Britain’s legal position.

Roman Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clifford Ando
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
National Context ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Contemporary Study

Roman law has been a system of practice and field of academic study for some 2,400 years. Today, the field enjoys unprecedented diversity in terms of linguistic, disciplinary, and national context. However, the contours of contemporary study are the product of complex and imbricated historical factors: the non-codification by the Romans of the classical period of their own public law; solutions taken in the classical period and later to resolve conflicts among sources of law of very different antiquity; the codification in late antiquity of academic jurisprudence regarding private law; the on-going prestige of Roman civil law in medieval and late medieval Europe, which made it a resource for analogical argumentation in both public and international law; and much else besides. This chapter evaluates the contribution made by some of these factors to Roman legal history as a contemporary endeavour, with an eye to its future.

scholarly journals Introduction to Symposium on Framing Global Migration Law – Part II

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 134-135
Author(s):  
Jaya Ramji-Nogales ◽  
Peter J. Spiro
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
Human Mobility ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Human Movement ◽  
Control Approach ◽  
Global Migration ◽  
Economic Migration ◽  
Migration Crisis ◽  
Migration Law

Part I of this symposium on framing global migration law introduced broad conceptual parameters of a new field, looking back to its international law roots and forward to a new orientation beyond the strictures of refugee law. Part II looks to situate global migration law along a range of theoretical dimensions. Jacqueline Bhabha establishes the continuities of human movement in a historical context, modern and premodern. Far from representing a radical departure, the current migration “crisis” is consistent with massive migrations over the ages. Tendayi Achiume considers migration through the lens of colonization and decolonization. Out-migration from Europe was a core economic element of the colonization project; Achiume suggests that contemporary migration from former dependencies to metropolitan powers will correct co-dependencies that continue to advantage postcolonial powers. Focusing Achiume's lens on the problem of human trafficking, Janie Chuang complicates the binary depictions of economic migration that underpin contemporary international law. She suggests that global migration law's grounding in a migrant-centered perspective could help state actors to understand the structural causes of modern-day exploitation, enabling a shift from a crime control approach to a human mobility paradigm.

The Mandate System as a Messianic Alternative in the Ultra-Religious Jurisprudence of Rabbi Dr Isaac Breuer

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amos Israel-Vleeschhouwer
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Legal History ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Human Welfare ◽  
Global Peace ◽  
Law And Justice ◽  
Mandate System ◽  
Alternative Regime

Dr Rabbi Isaac Breuer, a German jurist and Jewish rabbi, represented the ultra-orthodox community in Palestine before the international committees which considered the future of the Palestine Mandate. In his work, Breuer criticised the concept of sovereignty and introduced an alternative regime for global governance of developing peoples. His unique position, as analysed in this article, can contribute to contemporary debates surrounding the role of sovereigns as trustees of humanity, sovereignty and international law and ways of promoting global peace and human welfare.By introducing Breuer's thought, this article seeks to contribute additional sources – both Jewish and universal – to these ongoing debates. Letting these neglected voices in international legal history enrich the debate can convince us, once again, of the importance of the periphery and of peripheral voices for the development, vitality and relevance of international law.Breuer's model replaces the notions of ‘sovereignty’ and ‘rights’ with those of internalised obligations and subservience to law and justice. Limiting any national aspirations to total sovereignty, he implored the United Nations to refrain from elevating the Jewish national home to statehood. Opposing the Zionist position, he insisted that the Mandatory power and international institutions would enable two nations to develop side by side, in what he termed ‘the state of peace’, under international trusteeship.We carefully draw on Breuer's insights to reflect on present debates on trusteeship, sovereignty and the management of areas devastated by conflict.

scholarly journals Of International Law, Semi-colonial Thailand, and Imperial Ghosts

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prabhakar SINGH
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Political Independence ◽  
Preah Vihear ◽  
Political Ferment

AbstractI argue that contextually reading two disputes involving Siam—Cheek v. Siam (1898) and the Temple of Preah Vihear (1962)—proves that both private law and public international law are structurally rigged against ex-semi-colonial nations. Nineteenth-century Siam was a political ferment known variously as a semi-colonial, semi-peripheral, non-colonial, or uncolonized polity. Siam bargained under imperial shadows her political independence by the tactical grants of concession contracts, as well as by negotiating treaties with competing European powers. In the post-colonial Temple of Preah Vihear case, colonial stationery—maps, photographs, and communiqués—as well as imperial customs offered evidentiary support to Cambodia, an ex-colonial state, against Thailand. In the early twentieth century, while authors picked Cheek v. Siam as a precedent for the law of international claims, textbooks offer the Temple of Preah Vihear case as a precedent on the form of treaties and estoppel. Conclusively, these two cases allow us to locate, if not exorcise, the ghosts of empires in Asian legal history, exposing, at the same time, Judge Koo’s Orientalization of customary international law.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document