The Law of Nations, Static and Dynamic

1933 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 630-650 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josef L. Kunz

The antithesis between a static and a dynamic law of nations, as used in this article, means the distinction between a law of nations primarily occupied with the static purpose of preserving the status quo, containing no rules for its own modification by a peaceful and orderly process, and a law of nations providing rules for its own change. Of course, even a static law will never be able to stop the historical development in a world governed by the supreme rule of change, but this dynamic development will be brought about in many instances by the violation of the static law, by violent methods—revolution in internal, war in international law. On the other hand, no juridical order can be exclusively dynamic, for the maintenance of the law in force is a necessary condition for juridical security. The dynamic law will repose on a balance between static rules making for security, and dynamic rules providing for the necessary change by peaceful methods in conformity with the law which is to be changed. The change here will not be the outcome of a revolution, but of an evolution, brought about in virtue of the juridical order itself.

Author(s):  
Sabahi Borzu

This chapter discusses ten important findings included in this book. One finding is the dual origin of the modern rules on State responsibility and reparation in both private law notions and public international law, resulting in the objective of reparation of putting the aggrieved party in the ‘hypothetical position’, that would have existed if the unlawful act had not occurred. This objective is mirrored in the modern Chorz ów Factory formula. Restitution, which seeks to re-establish the status quo ante, may need to be accompanied by additional compensation to fully reach the hypothetical position. The amount of compensation, on the other hand, based on the recent jurisprudence, may vary depending on whether the acts complained of were lawful or unlawful. Other important points arising from this study concerning the principles of reparation and compensation are also highlighted in the chapter.


1924 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-280
Author(s):  
James Brown Scott

There are certain preliminary observations which should be made before we can take up the question of codifying international law or the method of codification, for without a correct understanding of certain matters, which may be considered fundamental, we may not know whether we are to deal with a system of law or a system of philosophy. As a matter of fact we are dealing with both, for law develops unconsciously or consciously in accordance with the principles of philosophy. If the law of nations is to be considered law in the strict sense of the word, we must deal with it as a system of law. If, on the other hand, it is a system of philosophy rather than of law, we must deal with it as philosophy, and the point of approach and the method of treatment will be different. But, above and beyond law, we are dealing with justice, and with those principles of justice, which, expressed in rules of law, we call the law of nations. Justice is the source; the principles of justice applicable to the conduct of nations constitute the law of nations, and the rules of law based upon these principles change with conditions, or to meet new conditions, and form the body and substance of international law at any given period.


2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 209-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerstin Mechlem

AbstractThe article discusses the development of international groundwater law from the first codification efforts of modern water law until present and raises relevant issues for the way forward. It first traces international groundwater law from the 1960s until the end of the last century. It then reviews the growing attention groundwater has received during the last decade and third discusses the status quo. It places particular emphasis on the 2008 Draft Articles on the Law of Transboundary Aquifers adopted by the International Law Commission and the legal arrangements made for five of the 273 transboundary aquifers. It concludes with thoughts on the way forward in this important and understudied area of international law.


1988 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Bederman

International law is the most rarefied of social sciences. Even so, it has scarcely any sense of its intellectual history. International law is finely articulated, oblique in its analysis, and respectful of its position as an arbiter of national competition and conflict. But aside from the casual citation to an ancient arbitration or the consultation of a famous publicist for an essential principle, little credence has been given to its historical development as either a collection of doctrines or a learned study. This article offers both an intellectual history of an international law doctrine and a tour d’horizon of the nature of discourse in our discipline.


remedies which the law provides for breach of contract supposedly serve to place the party not in breach in the position he would have been in had the promise been performed. In contrast, many reliance based obligations arise by operation of law through the medium of tortious duties to exercise reasonable care. Here the basis of any award of damages is to return the injured party to the position he was in before the defendant’s wrong was committed. As such, the interest protected is not one of expectation of performance, but instead the status quo interest – the claimant is compensated so as to restore the status quo before the defendant committed his wrong. While many reliance based obligations do involve the protection of the status quo interest, it should not be assumed that this is always the case. In particular, it should not be assumed that expectations of performance are entirely irrelevant where a promisee has reasonably relied upon the promise of the other party. Statements other than purely contractual promises are also capable of engendering expectations in another person. Much of the difficulty associated with identifying the interest protected when promises which induce reliance are enforced arises from the view in Combe v Combe that the doctrine of promissory estoppel operates as a shield rather than as a sword. However it has been seen that there may be circumstances in which the courts may allow certain varieties of estoppel to be used as a means of creating new rights where none previously existed, so as to adequately protect the equity raised in favour of the promisee resulting from his reasonable reliance on the promise of the other party. Thompson identifies the main arguments in support of the view that reliance upon a non-contractual promise may now protect the promisee’s expectation interest:

1995 ◽  
pp. 212-213

2007 ◽  
pp. 5-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Searle

The author claims that an institution is any collectively accepted system of rules (procedures, practices) that enable us to create institutional facts. These rules typically have the form of X counts as Y in C, where an object, person, or state of affairs X is assigned a special status, the Y status, such that the new status enables the person or object to perform functions that it could not perform solely in virtue of its physical structure, but requires as a necessary condition the assignment of the status. The creation of an institutional fact is, thus, the collective assignment of a status function. The typical point of the creation of institutional facts by assigning status functions is to create deontic powers. So typically when we assign a status function Y to some object or person X we have created a situation in which we accept that a person S who stands in the appropriate relation to X is such that (S has power (S does A)). The whole analysis then gives us a systematic set of relationships between collective intentionality, the assignment of function, the assignment of status functions, constitutive rules, institutional facts, and deontic powers.


Author(s):  
Edna Ullmann-Margalit

Some of the most difficult decisions in law and ordinary life are simplified by the use of some kind of presumption. Accused criminals are presumed to be innocent, and most of the time, legislative acts are presumed to be constitutional. And when people do not know what to do, they often adopt a presumption of some kind—for example, sticking with the status quo, or perhaps in favor of making a specific change. In countless domains, presumptions help people to extricate themselves from difficult situations. They can serve as a way of breaking an initial symmetrical situation by using a supposition not fully justified, yet not quite rash either—favoring one action over the other.


Author(s):  
Jenny Andersson

Alvin Toffler’s writings encapsulated many of the tensions of futurism: the way that futurology and futures studies oscillated between forms of utopianism and technocracy with global ambitions, and between new forms of activism, on the one hand, and emerging forms of consultancy and paid advice on the other. Paradoxically, in their desire to create new images of the future capable of providing exits from the status quo of the Cold War world, futurists reinvented the technologies of prediction that they had initially rejected, and put them at the basis of a new activity of futures advice. Consultancy was central to the field of futures studies from its inception. For futurists, consultancy was a form of militancy—a potentially world altering expertise that could bypass politics and also escaped the boring halls of academia.


Author(s):  
Kubo Mačák

This chapter traces the development of the law of belligerent occupation in order to identify trends relevant to the regulation of internationalized armed conflicts. It observes that despite the general grounding of this body of law in a state-centric paradigm, several isolated developments have contemplated the possibility of non-state actors becoming belligerent occupants of a portion of state territory. Moreover, the chapter highlights that the law of belligerent occupation has undergone a fundamental transformation as part of a general trend of individualization and humanization of international law. Therefore, it is no longer simply a brake on inter-state relations and a protector of states’ interests and institutions. Instead, the law has gradually brought individuals’ interests to the fore, putting persons before institutions and individuals before states. Overall, the chapter uncovers the historical reasons that support an extensive view of the applicability of the law of occupation to modern internationalized armed conflicts.


Author(s):  
David Boucher

The classic foundational status that Hobbes has been afforded by contemporary international relations theorists is largely the work of Hans Morgenthau, Martin Wight, and Hedley Bull. They were not unaware that they were to some extent creating a convenient fiction, an emblematic realist, a shorthand for all of the features encapsulated in the term. The detachment of international law from the law of nature by nineteenth-century positivists opened Hobbes up, even among international jurists, to be portrayed as almost exclusively a mechanistic theorist of absolute state sovereignty. If we are to endow him with a foundational place at all it is not because he was an uncompromising realist equating might with right, on the analogy of the state of nature, but instead to his complete identification of natural law with the law of nations. It was simply a matter of subject that distinguished them, the individual and the state.


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