The Family of Nations as an Element of the Ideology of Colonialism

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 278-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harald Kleinschmidt
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
International System ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Technical Term ◽  
The Family

The article links the use of the concept of ‘civilisation’ with the nineteenth-century perception of the international system, for which the ‘family of nations’ was current as a technical term in international legal theory for the international legal community. Following the distinction between state sovereignty and subjecthood under international law, international legal theorists denied the latter to most states outside Europe and classed them as ‘uncivilised’, even though their governments had concluded treaties under international law with European and the us governments and had thereby been formally recognised as sovereigns. In many cases, these treaties were agreements concerning the establishment of ‘Protectorates’ as the paramount type of dependency under the control of a European or the us government. In this context, international law became the house law of the ‘Family of Nations’, which extended across the globe while denying access to it to many states.

Part I Histories, Ch.6 The Ottoman Empire, the Origins of Extraterritoriality, and International Legal Theory

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Özsu Umut
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
The One ◽  
Intellectual Production

This chapter argues that it was partly through engagement with the Ottoman Empire, particularly its tradition of extraterritorial consular jurisdiction, that nineteenth-century European and American jurists came to view China, Japan, and a number of other states as ‘semi-civilized’, setting them against ‘civilized’ states on the one hand and ‘savage’ peoples on the other. These states on the ‘semi-periphery’ exercise a greater degree of agency in international law, given their closeness to dominant centers of economic and intellectual production that had come under their influence, as well as their possession of national traditions and state institutions resilient enough to resist formal colonization. These traits are especially evident in the case of the Ottoman Empire, a powerful state that made a point of modifying its profile for different audiences.

Some Problems in the History of the Law of Nations in Asia (1963)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Alexandrowicz
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law

This chapter considers problems in the study of the history of the law of nations in Asia. It argues that international lawyers have focused their attention on the legal aspects of contemporary problems of international relations and politics, and on the operation of tribunals and quasi-tribunals and the case law they produce. Writers of present day treatises of international law devote just a few introductory pages to the history of the subject and these short chapters are often based on similar introductions in nineteenth-century treatises. The chapter discusses some of the elements of legal change in which European–Asian relations played a significant role; the gradual elimination of the natural law outlook by growing European positivism; the principle of universality of the law of nations and the principle of identity of de facto and de jure State sovereignty; and the use of capitulations to delay the ‘entry’ of Asian States into the family of nations.

Two Representatives of the Grotian School

1914 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-50
Author(s):  
Charles G. Fenwick
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Scientific Basis ◽  
Federal States ◽  
The Family ◽  
Standard Text ◽  
Municipal Law ◽  
Mutual Relations ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Near Future

The growth of international law, both in precision and in scope, has been one of the marked features of the general development of law in the nineteenth century. It is true that even at the present day the reproach is often cast upon international law that its content is unsettled, its authority vague, and its method unscientific. But one has only to compare the standard text-books of the present day with the treatises that were quoted as authorities in the beginning of the nineteenth century to realize the great progress which has been made towards the establishment of international law upon a truly scientific basis. It cannot fairly be expected that international law should have as yet attained, or shall in the near future attain, the precision and definiteness of municipal law. The last decade of the century did indeed witness the first sitting of an international legislative body in the form of a conference at The Hague, which enacted what may be called international statutory law. But apart from the fact that this body was composed of the representatives of independent, not of federal, states, and therefore its rulings could not be final, the subject-matter with which it dealt was in many cases not such as would admit of definition and analysis after the methods of municipal law. The states composing the family of nations present differences of physical, mental and moral characteristics far more marked than those exhibited by the individuals within a given state, and it is but natural therefore that it should be correspondingly difficult to codify in a precise and scientific manner the rules governing their mutual relations. But while the difficulties attending the codification of international law cannot be denied, there is reason to believe that the growth of international law during the twentieth century will proceed towards its appointed goal as steadily as it has done during the nineteenth century.

Constitutionalism as Liberal-Juridical Consciousness: Echoes from International Law's Past

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
RICHARD COLLINS
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
World Order ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Global Constitutionalism ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Sense Of Justice

AbstractThe future of international law is uncertain. The long-hoped-for revitalization of international law and its institutional structures following the end of the Cold War now seems at risk from an increasing deformalization of, and neo-liberal disregard for, international law. Meanwhile European international lawyers are responding by reasserting a Kantian project for a global constitution under an international rule of law. In this article I attempt to position these recent claims that the international legal order is undergoing a process of constitutional transformation in the context of a long-standing connection, since at least the post-revolutionary nineteenth century, between the idea of a positive international law and the emerging structures of the European constitutional nation-state. If one can trace a cosmopolitan or constitutional project to the influence of domestic public law from this time, one can also trace the inherent tension between international law's promise of a substantive ‘good life’, or sense of justice, and its purported legitimacy in a commitment to a voluntarist, or contractarian, form of obligation. These simultaneous commitments seem incompatible, but are inseparable from international law's embedded liberalism, which requires interplay between them to make sense of progress in the absence of any explicit underlying philosophy. In tracing similarities in concerns from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first, as well as repetitions in legal arguments, I suggest that the alternatives of American empire and a (European) vision of global constitutionalism are merely necessary oppositions, reflecting this broader tension underlying the discipline. Because lawyers avoid clarity on what is taken for granted in a leap from (selective) empirical realism towards assertive normative ambition, I argue that it is a mainstream, liberal-juridical consciousness – rather than any explicit legal theory – which continues to sustain shared assumptions about international law's past, as well as a promise of a future liberal world order. The apparently opposing visions of future world order are merely different sides of the same coin: each reflecting back, but each ultimately sustained by the other.

The Approach of the Chinese Communists to the Study of International Law, State Sovereignty and the International System

1977 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 315-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Ogden
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International System ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
People’S Republic Of China ◽  
People's Republic Of China ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Key Terms ◽  
Legal Writers

The attitudes of Chinese Communist legal writers and political theorists towards international law, their conception of its functions, and their interpretation of the meanings of the key terms are predictably different from, and often opposed to, those of writers in the western tradition. Such differences existed before the establishment of the People's Republic of China, and they became more pronounced with the Chinese Communists' adoption of Marxism-Leninism as their official state ideology. The divergence has become increasingly centred on the concept of sovereignty, and on the assumptions as to its nature and its relationship to international law.

scholarly journals International Law, Sovereignty and the Responsibility to Protect: An Overview

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
Thomas Prehi Botchway
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International System ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
International Commission ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Sovereign Equality ◽  
International Regulations ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Style Of Writing

This paper is an attempt at analysing the intricacies between international law, the concept of Responsibility to Protect and its implications for the sovereignty of modern states. The paper examines how the concept of responsibility to protect (as stipulated by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS)) impacts on the sovereignty of states. It adopts the essay style of writing and reviews a number of documents on the subject of international law, sovereignty and the responsibility to protect. The paper consequently argues that though the ICISS claims that its “purpose is not to license aggression with fine words, or to provide strong states with new rationales for doubtful strategic designs” (ICISS, 2001, p. 35), the Commission’s very attempt to exempt the permanent five and other so-called major powers from intervention does just that whether intentionally or unintentionally. It consequently recommends that much effort should be made to address the inequalities within the international system through the formulation of appropriate policies and international regulations that address the sovereign equality of states in the international system, especially on the question of intervention.

scholarly journals Sovereign Marks

2018 ◽  
pp. 453-462
Author(s):  
Tanja Aalberts
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
Private Company ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
The Family ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
Important Object

This chapter analyses a treaty made on behalf of the Association Internationale du Congo (the infamous private company of King Leopold II of Belgium) with roi Né-Do’ucoula of Boma on 19 April 1884. Whereas legal analysis would usually focus on the content of the treaty and its provisions to establish legal facts, this chapter moves the attention to the signatures at the bottom. It argues that they constitute an important object of international law, as they provide a counter narrative to the popular Standard of Civilisation as the founding doctrine of the Family of Nations in the nineteenth century. As objects of international law the signatures—or rather marks or crosses—embody at the same time the condition of possibility of the nineteenth-century international legal order, and undermine its defining framework (that is, constitute its condition of impossibility).

scholarly journals HUMAN SECURITY AND THE “RIGHTFUL STATE”

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-39
Author(s):  
Crăciun Leucea
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Negative Selection ◽  
International System ◽  
Human Security ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Broad Definition ◽  
Main Challenge ◽  
Selection Mechanisms

The article is based on the idea that human security concept should be understood as anopen one, accepted in its broad definition and definitely not in its narrow terms because thevariety and multilevel forms of threats to human security can manifest in manners hard toanticipate. The main challenge in promoting human security concept internationally lies in itspower to deconstruct the principle of state sovereignty which is the key-stone of thecontemporary international system and of international law and that’s the reluctance toaccepting it. But if there weren’t bad states, the human security concept wouldn’t have emerged.The point we intend to advance is that defining human security restrictively might implylegitimating sovereignty for “bad” countries in which corruption is endemic and where groupsof people who achieved power by “negative selection mechanisms” perpetrates humaninsecurity rather than security.

International Law and Resort to Armed Force

1932 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 308-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. L. Brierly
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
International System ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Armed Force ◽  
Primary Task ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Great Merit ◽  
The Law ◽  
Set Up

THE relation of war to the international system was stated by W. E. Hall in a well-known passage of his treatise in these words: ‘International law has no alternative but to accept war, independently of the justice of its origin, as a relation which the parties to it may set up if they choose, and to busy itself only in regulating the effects of the relation.’ This view, which came to be more or less generally accepted by international lawyers in the course of the nineteenth century, marked the definite abandonment of the claim of the classical jurists to distinguish between bellum iustum, and bellum iniustum, and it was in a sense an admission that international law had so far failed in the primary task of all legal systems, that of establishing and maintaining a distinction between the legal and the illegal use of force. But it had the great merit of candour, and it brought the theory of the law into accord with what had always been and still remained the facts of international practice.

Humanizing War in the Nineteenth Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 127-152
Author(s):  
Pablo Kalmanovitz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Moral Appraisal ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Chapter 5 examines the integration of the concept of humanity as a legal category into the laws of war in the late nineteenth century. It looks at the writings of Francis Lieber, Johann Caspar Bluntschli, and Gustave Moyner, all of whom were influential publicists and highly articulate voices in the early stages of codification of the laws of war. The chapter highlights the tensions that resulted from integrating the humanity concept into the background paradigm of regular war, and it examines more broadly the deeper transformations in international legal theory that enabled this to happen. The channeling of the humanitarian agenda through international law produced a novel understanding of the laws of war as constituted by two fundamental principles in tension, necessity and humanity. This persistent duality continues to confuse our moral appraisal of the laws of war up to the present.

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