The Oxford Handbook of International Law in Asia and the Pacific

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
International Order ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Asia Pacific Region ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Colonial Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of International Law

The growing economic and political significance of Asia has exposed a tension in the modern international order. Despite expanding power and influence, Asian states have played a minimal role in creating the norms and institutions of international law; today they are the least likely to be parties to international agreements or to be represented in international organizations. That is changing. There is widespread scholarly and practitioner interest in international law at present in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as developments in the practice of states. The change has been driven by threats as well as opportunities. Transnational issues such as climate change and occasional flashpoints like the territorial disputes of the South China and the East China Seas pose challenges while economic integration and the proliferation of specialised branches of law and dispute settlement mechanisms have also encouraged greater domestic implementation of international norms across Asia. These evolutions join the long-standing interest in parts of Asia (notably South Asia) in post-colonial theory and the history of international law. This book analyses the approach to, and influence of, key states of the region, as well as whether truly ‘Asian’ trends can be identified and what this might mean for international order.

Environmental Migration in the Asia-Pacific Region: Could We Hang Out Sometime?

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benoît MAYER
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Pacific Region ◽  
Transnational Governance ◽  
Asia Pacific Region ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Environmental Migration ◽  
The Pacific

Several proposals for global legal governance of environmental migration have recently been published, almost exclusively by Western scholars. The present article denounces the geographical and intellectual disconnect between descriptive works on environmental migration as a phenomenon and the normative studies on the developments in law and governance. It suggests that this disconnect has resulted in a post-colonial approach towards tackling environmental migration, which could impede the protection of environmental migrants. While recalling that governance of environmental migration is most likely to succeed within a regional framework, this article pleads for a home-grown legal approach of environmental migration in the Asia-Pacific. Participating in a multilateral discussion is a unique opportunity for the rising countries of Asia and the Pacific to strengthen their growing diplomatic roles and to demonstrate their capacity in the development of liberal forms of transnational governance.

Anarchy over Law? Towards a Genealogy of Modern War Justifications (1789–1918)

2021 ◽  
pp. 147-166
Author(s):  
Hendrik Simon
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Order ◽  
Mirror Image ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Modern War

Hendrik Simon follows up on Anuschka Tischer’s analysis of European justifications of war. He turns to transformation of this discourse’s vocabulary in the context of the nineteenth century: to this day, most textbooks on the history of international law and international relations contain the proposition that European states held a sovereign right to go to war (liberum ius ad bellum) in the nineteenth-century international order. The latter is still understood as an anarchic mirror image of the modern international order, which (supposedly) emerged in the first half of the twentieth century. This assumption is challenged in this chapter: by outlining a genealogy of modern war justifications, starting with the French Revolutionary Wars, Hendrik Simon seeks to deconstruct liberum ius ad bellum as a myth which emanated from the realist and liberal narratives of the emergence of the modern international order. The fundamental argument is that the ‘long’ nineteenth century is not the anarchic converse of the modern discourse on war and international order—but its epoch of birth.

‘This Modern Grotius’

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Alexandrowicz
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Order ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Global History ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Global Affairs ◽  
European Thought

This introductory chapter discusses the life and work of Polish–British scholar and lawyer, Charles Henry Alexandrowicz (1902–75). Alexandrowicz pioneered the historical study of international law in its extra-European contexts, a vein of research that is fundamental to the history of international law and to global history more generally. Unlike contemporary scholars who assume that international law was an exclusively European phenomenon, or those who find only Eurocentrism in various forms in the history of European thought on international and global affairs, Alexandrowicz recognized international law’s complicity with European imperial expansion and sought to find in history resources for a more egalitarian and less Eurocentric international order.

scholarly journals Russia, China and the Pacific Countries of Latin America: Opportunities for Multilateral Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific Region

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 241-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. P. Novikov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin America ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Order ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Pacific Region ◽  
Asia Pacific Region ◽  
Multilateral Cooperation ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Regional Order

The article is devoted to the problems of the development of modern relations of Russia, China and the  Pacific states of Latin America. Author focuses on potential of cooperation of these states in multilateral  formats and dialogues and the reform of the economic and institutional order in the Asia-Pacific. The  relevance of such cooperation is increasing due to the crisis of the international order that has emerged  in the Asia-Pacific region. This crisis manifests itself in two aspects. First, we may observe a certain lack  of institutions of regulation of economic relations and ideas for their further development. Such a  complex agenda is shaped by Russia and China in relation to Eurasia (the concept of “Greater Eurasia”),  but the promotion of a similar agenda in the APEC faces many contradictions. Second, the Asia-Pacific region is becoming an area of confrontation between the United States and China, which is also  manifested in the struggle for the future configuration of the regional order in the region. The Pacific  countries of Latin America were not affected by either the Russian or Chinese mega-initiatives of recent  years, which are aimed precisely at creating a new international order. Meanwhile, these countries are  APEC members and participants in many regional initiatives, as well as potentially significant economic  partners for both Russia and China. Moreover, the author believes that a similar level of economic  development and similar needs objectively bring together the views and approaches of the leading  Eurasian powers and the Pacific states of Latin America to the development of multilateral institutions of  the regional order. However, the historically established institutional and political linkage of these  countries to the United States currently determines their support for American initiatives. This provision, however, is not a given, and some irregularity of the American regional policy under the Trump  administration makes the development of dialogue with these countries on the broad problems of  multilateral cooperation in Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific region even more in demand. The author  considers the proposed analysis and some conclusions as an opportunity for academic and expert  discussion on the identified issues. 

The Horizon of Becoming: Culture, Gender and History after September 11

2002 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-253
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Shared Vision ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
The Military ◽  
Analytical Tools

AbstractFeminist analyses of international law can be seen as part of the wider effort to broaden international law beyond its current foundations and assumptions. International lawyers can usefully work with feminist, post-colonial, indigenous, critical and postmodern perspectives in contextualizing the universalist claims of international law in order to make it both more inclusive and more sophisticated. International law might be positively transformed if it were to take the critical approaches of feminist and other scholars seriously. This article is an attempt to problematize the concepts of time and history as they relate to an understanding of international law from the perspective of the feminist, the post-colonial and the indigenous. How we analyze international law in an historical context strongly determines how relevant international law is to women and other marginalized voices. Attempting to understand the history of international law is essential to understanding how it works (or does not work) and how it is changing. But our understandings of history are themselves deeply flawed as analytical tools. The voices of the silenced are usually described as not being heard because of imbalances in economic and political power. On a deeper level they also may not be heard because the very nature of historical and legal discourse in the international arena makes their voices unintelligible within the `malestream' of time and history. We expect history to give us a sense of the truth of our shared past. But because historical records are dominated by the representation of the most powerful, the `truth' of those who are excluded from power may not seem genuine. More commonly, it is ignored. What we think of as a reality that we have shared may not in fact have been shared in the same way by `others' – even when `we' ourselves are part of that `other'. International law as we now know it was created as an offshoot of the development of the modern nation-state based on secular ideals of rationality and order. Women's history often tries to recapture the detail of all those `people without history' who have worked, fought, mothered and struggled `behind the scenes' of the Great Events depicted in wars and political battles that are so central to our usual shared vision. International law prioritizes precisely this dominant vision – the use of force, sovereignty, the state, the political, the military, the economic and the diplomatic. What does September 11 mean for women, for the poor, for indigenous peoples? This article does not discount the importance of recent world events – only that we might see them through different eyes from which we might gain new insights.

The Renaissance of Roman Colonization

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Legal Interpretation ◽  
Colonial Discourse ◽  
Property Distribution ◽  
Carlo Sigonio ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of International Law

The colonization policies of Ancient Rome followed a range of legal arrangements concerning property distribution and state formation, documented in fragmented textual and epigraphic sources. Once antiquarian scholars rediscovered and scrutinized these sources in the Renaissance, their analysis of the Roman colonial model formed the intellectual background for modern visions of empire. What does it mean to exercise power at and over distance? This book foregrounds the pioneering contribution to this debate of the great Italian Renaissance scholar Carlo Sigonio (1522/3–84). His comprehensive legal interpretation of Roman society and Roman colonization, which for more than two centuries remained the leading account of Roman history, has been of immense (but long disregarded) significance for the modern understanding of Roman colonial practices and of the legal organization and implications of empire. Bringing together experts on Roman history, the history of classical scholarship, and the history of international law, this book analyses the context, making, and impact of Sigonio’s reconstruction of the Roman colonial model. It shows how his legal interpretation of Roman colonization originated and how it informed the development of legal colonial discourse, from visions of imperial reform and colonial independence in the nascent United States of America, to Enlightenment accounts of property distribution, culminating in a specific juridical strand in twentieth-century Roman historiography. Through a detailed analysis of scholarly and political visions of Roman colonization from the Renaissance until today, this book shows the enduring relevance of legal interpretations of the Roman colonial model for modern experiences of empire.

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