Demilitarizing Palestine

2019 ◽  
pp. 191-206
Author(s):  
Louis René Beres
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
World System ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
System P ◽  
The World ◽  
National Leaders

In principle, at least, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made his country’s acceptance of Palestinian statehood contingent upon prior Palestinian “demilitarization.” This expressed contingency, however, is potentially contrary to pertinent international law, especially those norms regarding any sovereign state’s peremptory rights to self-defense. It follows, as this article will clarify, that potentially a new Palestinian state could permissibly abrogate any pre-independence commitments it had once made to remain demilitarized, and that reciprocally Israel ought never base its related security expectations upon any such mutable diplomatic promises. Ultimately most important, as the article concludes, is that national leaders all over the world finally begin to take seriously the organic “oneness” of our world legal order, and accordingly look toward identifying some promisingly coherent replacements for our time-dishonored Realpolitik or “Westphalian” world system.

1. The nature of international law and the international legal system

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Ilias Bantekas ◽  
Efthymios Papastavridis
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Vertical Structure ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Sovereign Equality ◽  
System P ◽  
International Legal System ◽  
International Adjudication ◽  
Peremptory Norms ◽  
Law Making

This chapter briefly discusses the nature of the international legal system. The premise is that the structure of the international legal system is fundamentally different from that of national legal order: contrary to the vertical structure encountered in domestic settings, in international law the structure is horizontal. States enjoy sovereign equality, while both international law-making and international adjudication are based on the consent of the States. There are various theories that have attempted to describe the nature of the international law, including naturalism, positivism, formalism, and realism. Also significant is the existence of a certain hierarchy in the international legal system, in the sense that there are some peremptory norms of international law, such as the prohibition of torture and genocide, to which there is no derogation.

1. The nature of international law and the international legal system

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilias Bantekas ◽  
Efthymios Papastavridis
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Vertical Structure ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Sovereign Equality ◽  
System P ◽  
International Legal System ◽  
International Adjudication ◽  
Peremptory Norms ◽  
Law Making

This chapter briefly discusses the nature of the international legal system. The premise is that the structure of the international legal system is fundamentally different from that of national legal order: contrary to the vertical structure encountered in domestic settings, in international law the structure is horizontal. States enjoy sovereign equality, while both international law-making and international adjudication are based on the consent of the States. There are various theories that have attempted to describe the nature of the international law, including naturalism, positivism, formalism, and realism. Significant is also the existence of a certain hierarchy in the international legal system, in the sense that there are some peremptory norms of international law, such as the prohibition of torture and genocide, to which there is no derogation.

Are New Principles Really Needed? The Potential of the Established Distinction Between Responsibility for Attacks by Nonstate Actors and the Law of Self-Defense

2013 ◽  
Vol 107 (3) ◽  
pp. 576-579 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahmoud Hmoud
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Community ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Armed Force ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Nonstate Actors ◽  
Legal Policy ◽  
Legal Response ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
State Practice

Daniel Bethlehem’s note on self-defense principles is intended to stimulate debate on one of the most contentious issues facing the international community today, namely, the legal response to imminent or actual terrorist attacks by nonstate actors. The note contains a set of principles that are sensitive to the practical realities of the circumstances that it addresses. But it is also intended to take up a legal policy matter—to create or amend principles of international law related to the use of armed force in dealing with threats from nonstate actors. To create or amend these principles, there must be clear evidence and sufficient state practice, or at least opinio juris, pointing toward the change of existing rules or the creation of new rules to “fill the gap.” The whole balance in international law among the various rights, obligations, and interests of international actors will be compromised if the notion of self-defense is to be expanded beyond its legitimate limitations. As illustrated below by some basic examples drawn from the existing law of self-defense, there is sufficient flexibility in the current legal order to allow for the lawful exercise of self-defense in response to most situations of armed terrorist attacks.

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.

Sociopoiesis

2018 ◽  
pp. 606-628
Author(s):  
Paul Prew
Keyword(s):  
World System ◽  
First Century ◽  
Metabolic Rift ◽  
Complexity Sciences ◽  
Ecological Economic ◽  
System P ◽  
The World ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
Immanuel Wallerstein ◽  
Ecologically Sustainable

The beginning of the twenty-first century is characterized by instability in the world-system—ecological, economic, and political. Immanuel Wallerstein, based on Ilya Prigogine’s concepts, argues the capitalist world-system is its crisis phase and now faces its inevitable transition to a new state. This chapter introduces a new concept, sociopoiesis, to integrate the complexity sciences with Wallerstein’s approach to crisis and Karl Marx’s understanding of metabolism and metabolic rift. Based on these ideas, this article demonstrates that capitalism cannot be ecologically sustainable due to how it organizes its relationship with nature: its sociopoiesis. The ecological rifts created by the capitalist sociopoiesis will eventually put pressure on the crisis phase Wallerstein describes in the capitalist world-system.

Self-Executing Treaties and the Impact of International Law on National Legal Systems: A Research Guide

1998 ◽  
Vol 26 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 56-159
Author(s):  
Jean-Marie Henckaerts
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
International Treaties ◽  
National Legislation ◽  
Legal Question ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
National Legislature

The effects of international law on the domestic legal order of the various countries of the world are manifold and so are the issues covered in this bibliography. In some countries, some international treaties or treaty provisions can be invoked before and applied by national judges. These are the so-called self-executing treaties or treaty provisions. Whether treaties are self-executing is a domestic legal question for national judges to decide on an ad hoc basis. In other countries, no treaty can be applied by a national judge unless it has been transformed into national legislation by an act of the national legislature. The concept of self-executing treaties has much less significance in these countries. This difference relates to two theories of international law known as monism and dualism. Under these theories, the international and domestic legal order are considered as one indivisible hierarchy or as two separate hierarchies respectively.

The Politics of International Law

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Scicluna
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
International System ◽  
Deep Understanding ◽  
Rising Powers ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
System P ◽  
The World ◽  
Fit For Purpose

This book is an introduction to international law for politics and international relations students. It provides a deep understanding of the possibilities and limits of international law as a tool for structuring relations in the world. The case study-driven approach helps students understand the complexities of international law, and illustrates the inextricable interaction between law and politics in the world today. In addition, it encourages students to question assumptions, such as whether international law is fit for purpose, and what that purpose is or ought to be. The book also discusses the potential of rising powers to shift the international system.

Imperial Metabolism

2021 ◽  
pp. 437-459
Author(s):  
Alf Hornborg
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
British Empire ◽  
World History ◽  
World System ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
System P ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Comparative Study

The chapter presents a theoretical framework for the comparative study of imperialism, viewed as strategies used by expansive states to appropriate resources from their hinterlands. It interprets imperial projects as ecological phenomena and focuses on their material metabolism based on the redistribution of labor and land. A cursory review of the history of six empires (Han China, Rome, Inca, Aztec, Spain, and Britain) illustrates some continuities and discontinuities in imperial strategies through more than two millennia of world history. The emphasis is on how energy, land, and labor are appropriated and how such appropriation is legitimized ideologically. Imperial strategies are roughly categorized as agrarian, mercantile, industrial, or financial. Special attention is given to the role of technology in the expansion of the British Empire. Industrial technologies are reconceptualized as strategies for locally saving human time and natural space at the expense of time and space lost elsewhere in the world-system.

International Law as Insulation – The Case of the World Bank in the Decolonization Era

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 459-484
Author(s):  
Dimitri Van Den Meerssche
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Global South ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
Legal Concepts ◽  
Legal Interventions

Abstract This article maps out how (international) legal concepts and norms were employed during the inter-institutional struggle between the United Nations and the World Bank in the decolonization era. The first contribution is historiographical. Drawing on material from the Bank’s (oral) archives, the article gives an original account of the ways in which the organization bypassed the universalist aspirations that were gaining a foothold in the UN’s democratic bodies. Secondly, the paper retraces how this particular event gave rise to a clash between opposing imaginaries of international legal order, where axiological aspirations voiced by states from the Global South were ultimately frustrated by a functionalist understanding of international (institutional) law that justified the Bank’s institutional insulation. Finally, the paper aims to provide a modest methodological contribution to the field of international institutional law – a doctrinal discipline that traditionally pays little empirical attention to the historical and sociological performativity of concrete legal interventions.

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.

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