The Hague and London Conferences and the Rise of an International Legal Order

2020 ◽  
pp. 111-151
Author(s):  
Gabriela A. Frei
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Maritime Law ◽  
State Practice ◽  
Sea Power ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
The Hague ◽  
Preparatory Work

Chapter 5 deals with the codification of international maritime law at the second Hague peace conference and the London naval conference. In addition, it is concerned with Great Britain’s position on the process of codification, as well as how Great Britain shaped an international legal order as guidance in a future maritime conflict. As the foremost sea power at the time, Great Britain not only possessed the most comprehensive state practice on international maritime law but also significantly influenced the process of codification. The chapter illuminates Great Britain’s preparatory work for the conferences and evaluates the importance of state practice for the process of codification. The three topics which were particularly important for Great Britain are treated in detail in this chapter: blockade, contraband, and neutrality. Although the Declaration of London provided a comprehensive legal framework, it also illustrated the challenges and limitations of codification with regard to a future maritime conflict.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 201-206
Author(s):  
Gabriela A. Frei
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Maritime Law ◽  
State Practice ◽  
Sea Power

Custom, state practice, and codification provided important reference points for the legal framework governing international relations in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Conclusion explores the shifts from custom to codification in international maritime law. It also outlines how Great Britain used international maritime law as an instrument in foreign policy to protect its economic and strategic interests as a sea power. This last chapter then discusses how international maritime law in turn affected visions of future warfare. Great Britain’s neutrality policy, and in particular the Foreign Enlistment Act, shaped the country’s state practice in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the conclusion discusses the importance of state practice in foreign policy at the time.

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.

A Crime that Offends the Conscience of Humanity: A Proposal to Reclassify Trafficking in Women as an International Crime

2009 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Tavakoli
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Crime ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
International Order ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Trafficking In Women ◽  
Women’S Human Rights ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
Women's Human Rights

AbstractThe current international legal framework for the prosecution of trafficking of women needs to be revisited if trafficking is to be combated more effectively. The treatment of trafficking as a transnational, rather than an international crime denies its essence as a crime that offends the conscience of humankind and which strikes at the heart of international order. This failure is symptomatic of an international legal order that prioritises and affords greater protection to abuses of men's as opposed to women's human rights.

scholarly journals Rights and Obligations of Third Parties in Armed Conflicts

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heike Krieger
Keyword(s):  
Use Of Force ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Normative Framework ◽  
Geneva Conventions ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
State Practice ◽  
International Legal Order

The chapter begins by noting that the prohibition of the use of force is the quintessential ius cogens rule of an erga omnes character. The same holds true for Common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions. Both norms create third-party rights and obligations. However, structural deficits in the international legal order often hinder their effective enforcement. Moreover, recent state practice challenges certain obligations stemming in particular from the prohibition on the use of force. This chapter analyzes and compares the normative framework of both rules and examines recent contestations in state practice. It concludes by exploring the question as to what extent both rules reflect community interests or are still grounded on a reciprocal bilateral basis related to states’ self-interest.

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.

Hybrid Warfare, Law, and the Fulda Gap

2018 ◽  
pp. 161-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aurel Sari
Keyword(s):  
Legal Framework ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Critical Element ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Hybrid Warfare ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
Normative Expectations ◽  
Hybrid Threats ◽  
The Law ◽  
Do So

The law constitutes an integral and critical element of hybrid warfare. Law conditions how we conceive of and conduct war. By drawing a line between war and peace and between permissible and impermissible uses of force, the international legal framework governing warfare stabilizes mutual expectations among the warring parties as to their future behavior on the battlefield. Hybrid adversaries exploit this stabilizing function of the law in order to gain a military advantage over their opponents. They do so by failing to meet the relevant normative expectations, by using a range of means, including noncompliance with the applicable rules, by instrumentalizing legal thresholds, and by taking advantage of the structural weaknesses of the international legal order, while counting upon the continued adherence of their opponents to these expectations. The overall aim of hybrid adversaries is to create and maintain an asymmetrical legal environment that favors their own operations and disadvantages those of their opponents. This poses two principal challenges, one specific and one systemic in nature. Law is a domain of warfare. Nations facing hybrid threats should therefore prepare to contest this domain and strengthen their national and collective means to do so. At the same time, the instrumentalization of law poses profound challenges to the post–Second World War international legal order. Nations committed to that order cannot afford to respond to hybrid threats by adopting the same means and methods as their hybrid adversaries without contributing to its decay.

scholarly journals THE EMERGING INTERNATIONAL CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER: THE IMPLICATIONS OF HIERARCHY IN INTERNATIONAL LAW FOR THE COHERENCE AND LEGITIMACY OF INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKING

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
E De Wet
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Public Power ◽  
Value System ◽  
Constitutional Order ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
Human Rights Norms

The article examines the contours and implications of the emerging international constitutional order. The "constitutional" nature of this order relates to the fact that it contains certain fundamental substantive and structural norms that form a supreme legal framework for the exercise of public power. The substantive elements primarily include the value system of the international legal order, meaning norms of positive law with a strong ethical underpinning (notably human rights norms) that have acquired a special hierarchical standing vis-à-vis other international norms through state practice. The structural elements refer to the subjects of the international legal order that collectively constitute the international community (polity), as well as the mechanisms for enforcement of the international value system. This vision of an international constitutional model is inspired by the intensification in the shift of public decision-making away from the nation state towards international actors of a regional (for example EU) or functional (for example WTO, UN) nature, and its eroding impact on the notion of a “total” constitutional order, where the fundamental substantive and structural norms that form the supreme legal framework for the exercise of public power are concentrated in the nation state. It is also inspired by the belief that such a supreme legal framework is only possible in a system where different national,regional and functional legal orders complement each other in order to form an international constitutional order.

scholarly journals Autonomous and Collective Sanctions in the International Legal Order

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nigel D. White
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Collective Response ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Legal Frameworks ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Eu

The UK government is currently proposing the enactment of a “Sanctions Act” upon the UK’s withdrawal from the EU in 2019, embodying a right to impose “autonomous sanctions” against other states and non-state actors, on the basis that the UK will no longer be able to benefit from the EU’s collective sanctioning competence. The spotlight is again on the nature and purposes of sanctions in international law. The article addresses the legal framework applicable to sanctions by, first of all, showing that the nature of sanctions is different in the international legal order to how it is conceived in domestic legal orders in that sanctions are primarily imposed in response to threats to or breaches of the peace and, in so doing, the analysis will distinguish sanctions from countermeasures and other non-forcible measures. It then proceeds to demonstrate that the values of peace and security that underpin sanctions are essentially normative and should be seen as part of the international legal order and enforceable through sanctions alongside other fundamental norms of international law. Whether viewed as responses to breaches of international law or not, the analysis shows that sanctions are collective measures exclusively within the competence of international organizations. Having established the conceptual and legal frameworks for understanding sanctions, the article considers sanctions imposed against states and non-state actors, and explores whether the move towards targeted sanctions is a form of collective response to violations of international law. The article finishes by considering that, in contrast to countermeasures and other measures of self-help, collective sanctions are inherently lawful, but can only be legally justified as measures adopted out of a necessity to prevent major ruptures to peace and international law.

scholarly journals Gender and Armed Conflict

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Chinkin
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Feminist Activism ◽  
International Criminal Tribunals ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
Gender Specific

This chapter examines the gender-specific harms suffered by women in armed conflict and the international legal framework for responding to them. It discusses how rape and other forms of sexual assault against women during armed conflict have become visible and acquired higher priority within the international legal order since the early 1990s because of feminist activism and intervention. This chapter also highlights legislative and jurisprudential developments that contributed to the increased protection of women during armed conflict. These include the creation of thead hocinternational criminal tribunals, the United Nations Security Council resolutions on ‘women, peace and security’, and the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

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