scholarly journals System, Order, and International Law: The Early History of International Legal Thought from Machiavelli to Hegel, edited by Kadelbach, Stefan, Thomas Kleinlein, and David Roth-Isigkeit

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-335
Author(s):  
Claire Vergerio
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Early History ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
System Order

System, Order, and International Law

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Knowledge Creation ◽  
Intimate Relationship ◽  
Early History ◽  
Global Order ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Thinking ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
System Order

The multi-authored volume reviews the early history of international legal thought and considers it to be a project that highlights the intimate relationship of philosophy and law in understanding the present models of global order. The interplay of system and order serves as a leitmotiv throughout the book and helps to link historical models to today’s discourse. It also explains the particular relevance of the period from Machiavelli to Hegel for this framework. In the first part of the book, individual chapters cover thinkers from Machiavelli to Hegel—including Vitoria, Suárez, Bodin, Gentili, Althusius, Grotius, and Spinoza, amongst others. The second part of the book is devoted to horizontal themes that open the opportunity to test old authorities against present-day approaches. Their analyses deepen the understanding of international legal thinking by pointing to often neglected elements, scrutinizing the knowledge-creation of the subject as we know it.

International Legal Thought

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Kleinlein
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Critical Potential ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries

This contribution reflects on the role of tradition-building in international law, the implications of the recent ‘turn to history’ and the ‘presentisms’ discernible in the history of international legal thought. It first analyses how international legal thought created its own tradition in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These projects of establishing a tradition implied a considerable amount of what historians would reject as ‘presentism’. Remarkably, critical scholars of our day and age who unsettled celebratory histories of international law and unveiled ‘colonial origins’ of international law were also criticized for committing the ‘sin of anachronism’. This contribution therefore examines the basis of this critique and defends ‘presentism’ in international legal thought. However, the ‘paradox of instrumentalism’ remains: The ‘better’ historical analysis becomes, the more it loses its critical potential for current international law. At best, the turn to history activates a potential of disciplinary self-reflection.

Leaving Nuremberg: America’s love/hate relationship with international law

2008 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-443
Author(s):  
LINDA S. BISHAI
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Legal Realism ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Thinking

AbstractThe official US attitude towards the prosecution of crimes against humanity and war crimes changed dramatically from the universality of Nuremberg to the exceptionalism of the Rome Treaty negotiation. This article argues that the history of US legal thinking indicates that both stances are the result of a conceptual battle between legal realism and legal idealism – strains of international legal thought that pose a battle of opposites which is never fully resolved into a coherent approach. Although Nuremberg would seem to illustrate the idealist extreme and the abstention from Rome the realist one, in fact both stances were the culmination of intense negotiation and argumentation between the two strains of thought.

scholarly journals A Conceptual History of Recognition in British International Legal Thought

2017 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Clark
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Basic Concept ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Conceptual History ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Legal Concepts

Abstract This article examines the development of the concept of recognition in the writings of British jurists. It first outlines methodologies of conceptual history as applied to international legal concepts, before examining four strands of development of the concept of recognition from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. It shows how the concept of recognition moved from examining intra-European diplomatic disagreements, to a focus on Christianity, civilisation and progress that barred non-European communities, to a late colonial-era emphasis on technicalities of government and territory, and eventually a state-centric account that normalised inferiority into difference, before emerging in the interwar period as a ‘basic concept’ of international law: intensely debated and closely tied to a range of political projects. The article concludes with reflections on why British thinking turns away from recognition in the 1950s, as the decolonising world turns to a new international law and self-determination.

Spatial Perceptions, Juridical Practices, and Early International Legal Thought around 1500

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Duve
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Knowledge Creation ◽  
Traditional Practices ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Slow Process ◽  
Experimental Knowledge ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Changing Knowledge

This chapter surveys the legal practice of drawing demarcation lines between 1479 and 1529 and illustrates that considering the changing knowledge about space is an important element for writing the history of international law. Important advances in cartography and changing spatial perceptions around 1500 clearly impacted international legal thought. The practice of drawing demarcation lines around 1500 can be understood as a blending of traditional practices, empirical observations, and new scientific knowledge. What has been called a ‘rationalization of space’ was a complex and slow process that built upon tradition, and existing practices and went hand in hand with explorations and experimental knowledge-creation by measurements.

On the uses and advantages of genealogy for international law

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-35
Author(s):  
Kate Purcell
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Contextual Approach ◽  
The Past ◽  
Normative Framework ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Cambridge School

AbstractThis article considers the relationship between the uses and forms of history within international law and questions of method in the development of histories of international law. It focuses on the advantages of genealogy as an approach to the history of international law given its capacity to both explain the way in which the law itself makes use of the past and intervene in this.Elaborating on the compatibility between genealogy and elements of the contextual approach to history associated with the ‘Cambridge School’, this article challenges recent suggestions that anachronism is irrelevant, unavoidable, or even a ‘method’ that might be fruitfully embraced in studies of international law’s past directed towards explaining and potentially altering its present. It argues that historians of international law should take the dangers of anachronism seriously, particularly if the histories they develop are to operate as a form of critique and basis for change. Genealogy is a form of history that allows a particularly potent critique of international legal thought and practice. It opens up possibilities for more radical change by questioning and moving beyond the normative framework that usually structures (and limits) calls for reform in international law.

International Law Commission: Draft Articles on State Responsibility

1998 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 440-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Kaye
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Early History ◽  
State Responsibility ◽  
Special Rapporteur ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Law Commission ◽  
Law Commission

State responsibility has been on the agenda of the International Law Commission since its earliest days. Nearly fifty years ago, in 1949, the Commission identified state responsibility as one of fourteen topics in international law ready for codification. Only in 1956, however, did the Commission, with F.V. Garcia Amador as special rapporteur, begin in earnest its state responsibility codification project. Garcia Amador, whose work focused on the responsibility of states toward aliens on their territory, submitted a number of reports through 1961, but limited discussion was devoted to the topic. A review of the early history of the Commission's state responsibility project, as well as other efforts at codification of this area of law, may be found in the ILC's 1969 Yearbook

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