An Introduction to the History of International Law

1924 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 246-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Baron S. A. Korff
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
History Of International Law

For a long time writers on international law took it for granted that the subject of their studies was a relatively recent product of modern civilization, and that the ancient world did not know any system of international law. If we go back to the literature of the nineteenth century, we can find a certain feeling of pride among internationalists that international law was one of the best fruits of our civilization and that it was a system which distinguished us from the ancient barbarians. Some of these writers paid special attention to this question of origins and endeavored to explain why the ancient world never could have had any international law.

History of the Historiography of Spanish Textbooks and Treatises on International Law of the 19th Century

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Yolanda Gamarra Chopo
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Late Development ◽  
Spanish History ◽  
Principal Axes ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 19Th Century

The bibliography of Spanish international law textbooks is a good indicator of the evolution of the historiography of international law. Spanish historiography, with its own special features, was a recipient of the great debates concerning naturalism v. positivism and universalism v. particularism that flourished in European and American historiography in the nineteenth century. This study is articulated on four principal axes. The first states how the writings of the philosophes continued to dominate the way in which the subject was conceived in mid-nineteenth century Spain. Secondly, it explores the popularization and democratization of international law through the work of Concepcion Arenal and the heterodox thought of Rafael Maria de Labra. Thirdly, it examines the first textbooks of international law with their distinct natural law bias, but imbued with certain positivist elements. These textbooks trawled sixteenth century Spanish history, searching for the origins of international law and thus demonstrating the historical civilizing role of Spain, particularly in America. Fourthly, it considers the vision of institutionist, heterodox reformers and bourgeois liberals who proclaimed the universality of international law, not without some degree of ambivalence, and their defence of Spain as the object of civilization and also a civilizing subject. In conclusion, the article argues that the late development of textbooks was a consequence of the late institutionalization of the study of international law during the last decade of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the legacy of the nineteenth century survives in the most progressive of contemporary polemics for a new international law.

scholarly journals Theorising Order in the Shadow of War. The Politics of International Legal Knowledge and the Justification of Force in Modernity

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 218-245
Author(s):  
Hendrik Simon
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
State Practice ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Modern War ◽  
War Discourse

Abstract The History of International Law lacks systematic studies on the link between legal scholars and practices of justifying war. This missing analytical link has for a long time given the impression that legal scholars describe ‘state practice’ in an ‘objective’, unpolitical way. Contradicting this impression, the article turns to the politics of legal scholars in the genesis of the modern war discourse. It reflects on the fateful entanglement of violence, law and politics, but nevertheless distinguishes between ‘objective’ and ‘political’ scholarship on the basis of Hans Kelsen’s work. Furthermore, the article illustrates the politicisability of legal scholars in selected historical cases of the ‘long 19th century’ (1789–1918). In all cases, two hearts pounded in lawyers’ chests: one scientific, the other political. As will be shown, the modern war discourse is shaped by a phenomenon that enables scholars to expand the intrinsic limits to the political instrumentalisation of law: ‘multi-normativity’.

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.

A Short History of International Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen C Neff
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
History Of International Law

This chapter presents a brief history of international law. It proceeds chronologically, beginning with an overview of the ancient world, followed by a more detailed discussion of the great era of natural law in the European Middle Ages. The classical period (1600–1815) witnessed the emergence of a dualistic view of international law, with the law of nature and the law of nations co-existing (more or less amicably). In the nineteenth century—the least-known part of international law—doctrinaire positivism was the prevailing viewpoint, though not the exclusive one. For the inter-war years, developments both inside and outside the League of Nations are considered. The chapter concludes with some historically oriented comments on international law during the post-1945 period.

Part IV Debates, Ch.44 Religion, Secularism, and International Law

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paz Reut Yael
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Catholic School ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
School Of Salamanca ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores the inseparable nature of the relationship between religion—more specifically, Christianity—secularism and international law. As the history of international law itself reveals, its inauguration as a liberal profession depended on a group of men who shared a particular universal intuition and cultural agenda that mirrored their western Christian European and cosmopolitan backgrounds at the end of the nineteenth century. Thus, the chapter scrutinizes the Catholic School of Salamanca as a case study that mirrors how Christianity—Catholic missionarism more accurately — became an integral part of international law to date, focusing on how and why the Salamancans’ specific re-configuration of the public/private has become a resilient and persistent formula to this day.

International relations and the critical history of International Law

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 282-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Pitts
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
International System ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Critical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of International Law

Just as the contemporary global structure is a product of nineteenth-century economic and political developments, namely, industrial capitalism and global empires dominated by European metropoles, a misleading conception of the international system as composed of formally equal sovereign states is a product of the same period, as Vattel’s conception of states as equal moral persons was taken up and transformed in the early nineteenth century, especially in imperial Britain. This model continues to shape interpretations of global politics in International Relations (IR), despite the persistence of the imperial legacy in the form of a stratified globe. Historical work informed by postcolonial studies and recent scholarship in International Law can give IR greater analytical and critical purchase on the current global order.

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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