ARTICLE: John HORNE, "End of A Paradigm ? The Cultural History of the Great War", Past & Present CCXLII, 1 (Feb 2019), 155-192

(image source: Past & Present)

Abstract:

Cultural history has dominated the study of the Great War for 25 years. Since all intellectual paradigms have a life-cycle, it seems important to ask whether this one can still innovate. Cultural history has achieved much. It has shown how the war was represented (by artists and intellectuals, ideologies and ‘war cultures’). It has gone further by making the recovery of the experiences of the war the core of its agenda. Cultural historians have revealed what the first mass event of the 20th century meant for soldiers, women and hitherto neglected groups such as prisoners and occupied populations. They have also re-situated the conflict in new ‘time frames’ and in the new spatial relationships intrinsic to a global war. The result, however, has been an analytically descriptive history that has played down the causal history emphasized by traditional political and military studies. Yet these kinds of history provide the ‘master narratives’ of the First World War. Should cultural history continue to operate in a semi-parallel universe? Renewal seems necessary, and to achieve this, cultural historians might engage more with other historical fields. Three short examples, in demographic and military history, illustrate how this could be done.

 Read the article on Oxford Scholarship.

LECTURE: John Burrow Memorial Lecture by David ARMITAGE, “Treaty Consciousness: Revisiting John Locke’s International Thought” (Brighton: University of Sussex, 21 MAR 2019)

(image source: University of Sussex)

Prof. David Armitage (Harvard) will deliver the John Burrow Memorial Lecture on 21 March 2019 at the University of Sussex in Brighton.

Topic: Treaty Consciousness: Revisiting John Locke’s International Thought.

More information here.

LECTURE: 'Double Amnesia: Zionism and Human Rights in History and Memory' by Prof James Loeffler (Cambridge: Lauterpact Centre for International Law, 1 MAR 2019)

(image source: Lauterpact Centre)

Lecture summary:

2018 marks the seventieth anniversary of two momentous events in twentieth-century history: the birth of the State of Israel and the creation of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Both remain tied together in the ongoing debates about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, global antisemitism, and American foreign policy. Yet the surprising connections between Zionism and the origins of international human rights are completely unknown today. Drawing on his recent book, Professor Loeffler will discuss how the forgotten Jewish past of human rights holds timely lessons for thinking about the intertwined futures of global justice and Jewish politics.

On the speaker:

James Loeffler is the Berkowitz Professor of Jewish History at the University of Virginia, where he teaches courses in Jewish, European, and international history and the history of human rights. He received his BA from Harvard and his MA and PhD from Columbia University. He also studied Jewish thought as a Dorot Postgraduate Fellow at the Hebrew University. He is the author of Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century (Yale, 2018), which was a finalist for the Jewish Book Council’s Natan Prize for Best Jewish Book of 2018. His first book, The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire (Yale, 2010), won eight major awards and honors. Other publications include the forthcoming anthology, The Law of Strangers: Jewish Lawyers and International Law in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, 2019), and the new special issue of the journal Law & Contemporary Problems on “The Future of Human Rights Scholarship.” He is the co-founder of the University of Virginia Human Rights Research Network, Former Dean’s Visiting Scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, and former Fellow of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. His writing on contemporary Jewish politics, antisemitism, and human rights has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, and The New Republic. For ten years he curated a concert series of Jewish classical music at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. He is currently at work on two books: a study of how the Holocaust became Genocide, and a biography of the author of “Hava Nagila.”

(more details: Lauterpacht Centre for International Law)

CONFERENCE: Les accords du Saint-Siège avec les États (XIXe-XXIe siècles). Modèles et mutations, de l’État confessionnel à la liberté religieuse (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 28 FEB-1 MAR 2019)

(image source: Veltra)

Summary:

Ce colloque s’intéresse aux accords de droit international signés entre le Saint-Siège et les États, qui, le plus souvent mais pas exclusivement, ont pris la forme de concordats et de conventions similaires. Il s’agira de les examiner à la lumière des pratiques diplomatiques, mais aussi au regard des dynamiques politico-religieuses des XIXe-XXIe siècles, et notamment des principes et des exigences constitutifs de la modernité. Il conviendra d’en mesurer l’évolution historique dans la typologie, la méthode, les contenus, la portée et les espaces concernés. On s’intéressera tout particulièrement aux modèles de rapports entre l’Église, l’État et la société que portent ces accords, ainsi qu’aux mutations opérées, depuis les États confessionnels ou engagés dans une relation particulière avec l’Église catholique, jusqu’à l’approche renouvelée de ces relations après la seconde guerre mondiale et surtout Vatican II, fondée sur le concept de liberté religieuse.

Programme:

Jeudi 28 février
Pontificia Università Gregoriana – Aula Magna9hAccueilNuno da Silva Gonçalves sj, Recteur de la Pontificia Università Gregoriana

• Marek Inglot sj, Doyen de la Faculté d’Histoire et des Biens culturels de l’Eglise de la Pontificia Università Gregoriana

• Fabrice Jesné, Directeur des études pour les époques moderne et contemporaine à l’École française de Rome

Discours inaugural

• Sua Em. Rev.ma Cardinale Pietro Parolin, Secrétaire d’Etat de Sa Sainteté François

Introduction

• Roberto Regoli (Pontificia Università Gregoriana), Marie Levant (LabEx EHNE, Sorbonne Université)

10h30Grammaire concordataireDiscutant : Settimio Carmignani Caridi (Università di Roma Tor Vergata)

• François Jankowiak (Université Paris-Sud), Les variations typologiques des accords entre le Saint-Siège et les États dans la doctrine juridique française. Modèles publicistes et approches canoniques, XIXe-XXe siècles

• Carlo Fantappiè (Università degli Studi Roma Tre), Dinamismi concordatari e modernizzazione ecclesiastica. Riflessioni metodologiche

• Fabrice Bouthillon (Université de Bretagne Occidentale), Trois sœurs. Les trois déplorations pontificales de 1809, 1931 et 1937 sur le sort des trois concordats de 1801, 1929 et 1933

14hLes concordats au temps des révolutionsDiscutante : Rita Tolomeo (Sapienza Università di Roma)

• Roberto Regoli (Pontificia Università Gregoriana), Con la Repubblica, l’Impero e i sovrani restaurati. Due secoli di trattati nel ventennio di Pio VII

• Anna Baranska (Université catholique de Lublin), La Congrégation des Affaires Ecclésiastiques Extraordinaires et les négociations concordataires : participation, pensée, résolutions (1814-1878)

• Andrea Ciampani (Università LUMSA di Roma), Mutamento socio-politico, Chiesa e concordati. La riflessione vaticana alla vigilia del Concilio

16h30Pratiques concordataires et diplomatie vaticaneDiscutante : Liliosa Azara (Università degli Studi Roma Tre)

• Nicholas Doublet (University of Malta), The Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs and the politics of concordats between the pontificates of Pius X and Benedict XV (1903-1922)

• Marie Levant (LabEx EHNE, Sorbonne Université), Le Vatican et l’Europe entre les deux guerres : le programme concordataire

• András Fejérdy (Institute of History of Hungarian Academy of Sciences), La pratica concordataria nell’Ostpolitik vaticana

Vendredi 1er mars
École française de Rome – Salle de conférences9hStratégies universelles et espaces périphériquesDiscutant : Roberto Regoli (Pontificia Università Gregoriana)

• Consolacion Fernández Mellén (Università del País Vasco), Negoziare l’eccezionalità? Le proposte di nuovi concordati per la Chiesa delle Antille spagnole (1851-1898)

• Edouard Coquet (Sorbonne Université), Des « accords » originaux entre le Saint-Siège et la France : les négociations sur les biens de mission dans l’espace colonial français, du traité de Versailles aux décrets Mandel (1919-1939)

• Olivier Sibre (Institut Georges Pompidou, SIRICE), Les tentatives de conventions du Saint-Siège avec la Chine depuis la fin du XIXe siècle : obstacles et défis de la faiblesse et de la puissance

11h30Mutations et adaptationsDiscutante : Marie Levant (LabEx EHNE, Sorbonne Université)

• Jacques-Olivier Boudon (LabEx EHNE, Sorbonne Université), Les nominations épiscopales dans les concordats du XIXe siècle

• Vicente Cárcel Ortí (Roma), Spagna: Dai concordati (1851 e 1953) agli accordi parziali (1976 e 1979)

• Cécile Gonçalvez (École des hautes études en sciences sociales), Mutations et adaptations de la diplomatie du Saint-Siège au Portugal à l’aune du concordat de 2004

• Friedrich Bechina, Melanie Rosenbaum (Congregation for Catholic Education of the Holy See), Tendencies in bilateral and multilateral treaties of the Holy See of recent decades in the field of Higher Education

14h30Renouvellements concordataires ?Discutant : András Fejérdy (Institute of History of Hungarian Academy of Sciences)

• Enrico Galavotti (Fondazione Giovanni XXIII per le scienze religiose), Il Concilio e il Concordato

• Paolo Valvo (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore), Il “continente de esperanza” tra passato e futuro: gli accordi Stato-Santa Sede in America Latina da Pio XII a Benedetto XVI

• Anthony O’Mahony (Blackfriars, University of Oxford), The Question of Religious Freedom in 'interreligious' contexts since Vatican II: The Holy See's Agreements with the Kingdom of Morocco (1983), the State of Israel (1993) and Palestine (2015)

Conclusions

• Giuseppe Dalla Torre (Università LUMSA di Roma), Laura Pettinaroli (Institut Catholique de Paris)

(source: Calenda)

NEW SUBDATABASE: History of International Law in HeinOnline

(image source: Hein)

The blog of the Graduate Institute's library announces a new section in HeinOnline: a subdatabase on History of International Law.

More information here.

OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE: Daniel S. ALLEMANN, "Empire and the Right to Preach the Gospel in the School of Salamanca, 1535-1600", Historical Journal 2018

(image source: Cambridge Core)

The Historical Journal published an article in open access by Daniel S. Allemann (Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge) on "Empire and the Right to Preach the Gospel in the School of Salamanca".

Abstract:

The sixteenth-century theologians of the School of Salamanca are well known for their sophisticated reflections on the Spanish conquest of the New World. But the nature of their responses seems far from clear and is subject to historiographical debate. Recent studies from the discipline of intellectual history suggest that the Salmantine theologians challenged the legitimacy of Spanish claims to the Americas. Scholars associated with the field of post-colonial studies, on the other hand, forcefully stress their entanglement in Spain's imperial venture overseas. This article, however, argues that these seemingly irreconcilable approaches are not in fact mutually exclusive. It shifts our attention to the sorely neglected ius praedicandi, the right to preach the gospel, which served to translate the Spanish theologians’ deeply rooted belief in the hegemonic truth of the Christian faith into a discourse of otherwise ‘secular’ natural rights. In adopting this novel lens, the article makes a case for assessing the language of the university theologians in its own terms while simultaneously exposing the support of Salamanca for Spain's imperial venture.

This article (20 pages) can be read online for free here.

SEMINAR: Les midis du Centre de droit international de l'ULB (Brussels, FEB-MAY 2019)

(image source: CDI ULB)

The Centre de droit international (ULB) published the programme of its lunchtime lectures.

One contribution adresses an historical perspective: the lecture on 16 May 2019 by dr. Agatha Verdebout (UC Lille): « L’impact de la théorie de la ‘guerre juste’ de Grotius sur la doctrine des siècles suivants : sur la trace des notes de bas de page ».

More information here.

JOURNAL: Leiden Journal of International Law XXXII (2019), no. 2

(image source: Cambridge Core)

Arthur Dyèvre, "Uncertainty and international adjudication"
Abstract:

In deciding whether to rule against a state party, international courts regularly confront a compliance dilemma: declare the state in breach of the international regime but with the risk that it will defy the court’s authority; or defer to the state but at the price of acquiescing to an unjust or undesirable outcome. Specifically, international adjudicators must solve this dilemma in a context of uncertainty, that is, without knowing with exactitude whether or not the state will prefer complying with an adverse ruling over overt defiance. I use a simple strategic model to cast light on this aspect of the compliance dilemma. Building off from the model’s insights, I then discuss the practices, doctrinal tactics and institutional mechanisms apt to reduce uncertainty and minimize state defiance. I highlight, in particular, the advantages of defiance avoidance mechanisms that help create informational feedback loops like test-the-water dicta and double-tier review. I illustrate how these mechanisms have been deployed by two of the world’s most powerful international courts, the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. Finally, I consider the limitations of these mechanisms along with the possibility for other international dispute settlement bodies to replicate them.

Isha Jain & Bhavesh Seth, "India’s nuclear force doctrine: Through the lens of jus ad bellum"
Abstract:

Nearly three decades after the Cold War, the present-day hostilities between India and Pakistan have shifted the focus of the threat of nuclear escalation to South Asia. It is in this context that this article seeks to assess the legality of India’s military nuclear doctrine under international law. Academic literature on the use of nuclear weapons has largely shied away from discussing the legality of specific military doctrines or ‘policies of deterrence’ of the nuclear weapon states, treating them as issues of military strategy that are beyond the realm of international law. This article hopes to challenge that dichotomy. Though several branches of international law are relevant to any discussion on nuclear weapons, this article shall only examine India’s nuclear doctrine through the lens of jus ad bellum. Specifically, this article shall focus on whether India’s nuclear doctrine constitutes a threat to use force, and if so, whether such threat is lawful. The article concludes that India’s nuclear doctrine can be construed to be a specific threat to use force against Pakistan, and that such threat may be unlawful for contemplating the disproportionate use of force.

Richard Clements, "From bureaucracy to management: The International Criminal Court’s internal progress narrative"
Abstract:

Within international institutions such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), lawyers increasingly encounter managerial practices which are designed to improve organizational efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Charting this trend, scholars have analyzed these practices with a view to make them more legitimate. However, this scholarly focus overlooks the role of managerial practices in legitimizing and thus sustaining the institutions in which they are embedded. In this article, I ask how managerial practices operate to boost the ICC’s reputation among its global audience. I find the answer in the Court’s use of the juxtaposed images of bureaucracy and management, with all their negative and positive associations. The Court uses these images to narrate a story of its own internal evolution from inefficient bureaucracy to efficient and well-managed organization. This hidden narrative of institutional progress functions rhetorically to frame, focus and distract the attention of the Court’s global constituencies. 

Dimitri Van Den Meerssche, "Performing the rule of law in international organizations: Ibrahim Shihata and the World Bank’s turn to governance reform"
Abstract:

In recent years, the academic field of international institutional law has taken a clear ‘constitutional’ turn. In this normative endeavour, liberal ‘rule of law’ ideals are being reinvigorated, translated and projected onto international organizations. This article trades this well-trodden path for a socio-legal inquiry into how the ‘rule of law’ is produced, practiced and performed in the everyday political and operational life of one specific international organization (the World Bank) during one contentious historical episode. To grasp what it means for ‘law to rule’, I argue, we need to expand our archives to the daily praxis of legality: the actors that embody it; the consciousness that drives it; the politics that rely on it; and the fragile institutional balances that give it meaning. Grounded in this pragmatist perspective, I retrace the intervention of legal expertise during the Bank’s turn to state reform in the wake of the Cold War. Descending from principles to practices, from norms to acts, from abstract heights to situated performances, the article not only strives for an enhanced understanding of the ‘rule of law’ within the World Bank, but also aims at a critical methodological intervention in the field of international institutional law.

Erika de Wet, "The invocation of the right to self-defence in response to armed attacks conducted by armed groups: Implications for attribution"
Abstract:

The right to self-defence in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter is increasingly being invoked in response to armed attacks conducted by armed groups located in a territory of another state, with or without the (direct) assistance of such a state. This article examines the implications of the invocation of the right to self-defence under these circumstances for the principles of attribution within the jus ad bellum paradigm. First, it illuminates how the threshold requirements for indirect armed attacks (that is, the state acting through a private actor) have been lowered since the 1986 Nicaragua decision of the International Court of Justice. In so doing, the article suggests that in order to prevent a complete erosion of the benchmarks of an indirect armed attack, the notions of ‘substantial involvement’ in an armed attack, ‘harbouring’, and ‘unwillingness’ should be interpreted as manifestations of due diligence. Thereafter, the article illustrates that there is also an increasing attribution of armed attacks directly to non-state actors, notably those located in areas over which territorial states have lost control. Such states could be depicted as being ‘unable’ to counter the activities of non-state actors. The article further submits that particularly in these instances, the principle of necessity within the self-defence paradigm can play an important role in curbing the potential for abuse inherent in the vague notion of ‘inability’, if interpreted in light of Article 25 of the Articles on State Responsibility for Internationally Wrongful Acts.

Dire Tladi, "The international law commission’s recent work on exceptions to immunity: Charting the course for a brave new world in international law?"
Abstract:

In the summer of 2017, the International Law Commission adopted a draft article on exceptions to immunity. The Draft Article adopted provides that immunity ratione materiae does not apply with respect to certain international crimes, namely crimes against humanity, the crime of genocide, war crimes, the crime of apartheid, torture, and enforced disappearances. These exceptions do not apply to immunity ratione personae. The Draft Article was adopted after a vote and was severely criticized by some members of the Commission. It has also received mixed reaction from states, with some supporting its content while others have opposed it. In the aftermath of the adoption of the Draft Article, there has also been academic commentary, some of which has been critical. The (main) criticism levelled against the Draft Article is that it does not represent existing law and has no basis in the practice of states. This article seeks to evaluate the criticism by considering whether there is any state practice in support of the Draft Article proposed by the Commission.

Geraíd Ó Cuinn & Stephanie Switzer, "Ebola and the airplane – securing mobility through regime interactions and legal adaptation"
Abstract:

This article concentrates on a particular controversy during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa; the mass cancellation of flights to and from affected countries. This occurred despite authoritative advice against such restrictions from the World Health Organization (WHO). During a public health emergency such as Ebola, the airplane sits at a site of regulatory uncertainty as it falls within the scope of two specialist and overlapping domains of international law; the WHO International Health Regulations (2005) and the Convention on International Civil Aviation. We explore how legal technicalities and objects, by promoting functional interactions between these two specialized regimes of law, were utilized to deal with this uncertainty. We show how the form and function of these mundane tools had a significant impact; assimilating aviation further into the system of global health security as well as instrumentalizing the aircraft as a tool of disease surveillance. This encounter of regimes was law creating, resulting in new international protocols and standards designed to enable the resumption of flights in and out of countries affected by outbreaks. This article therefore offers significant and original insights into the hidden work performed by legal techniques and tools in dealing with regime overlap. Our findings contribute to the wider international law literature on fragmentation and enrich our understanding of the significance of relational regime interactions in international law. 

Mohammad Shahabuddin, "The ‘standard of civilization’ in international law: Intellectual perspectives from pre-war Japan"
Abstract:

This article establishes the normative connection between Japan’s responses to regional hegemonic order prior to the nineteenth century and its subsequent engagement with the European standard of civilization. I argue that the Japanese understanding of the ‘standard of civilization’ in the nineteenth century was informed by the historical pattern of its responses to hegemony and the discourse on cultural superiority in the Far East that shifted from Sinocentrism to the unbroken Imperial lineage to the national-spirit. Although Japanese scholars accepted and engaged with the European standard of civilization after the forced opening up of Japan to the Western world in the mid-nineteenth century, they did so for instrumental purposes and soon translated ‘civilization’ into a language of imperialism to reassert supremacy in the region. Through intellectual historiography, this narrative contextualizes Japan’s engagement with the European standard of civilization, and offers an analytical framework not only to go beyond Eurocentrism but also to identify various other loci of hegemony, which are connected through the same language of power.

More information on Cambridge Core.

(source: ESCLH Blog)

BOOK: Duncan BELL (ed.), Empire, Race and Global Justice, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). ISBN 9781108427791, £ 75.00

(Source: CUP)

Cambridge University Press is publishing a new book on the role of race and empire in debates over global justice.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The status of boundaries and borders, questions of global poverty and inequality, criteria for the legitimate uses of force, the value of international law, human rights, nationality, sovereignty, migration, territory, and citizenship: debates over these critical issues are central to contemporary understandings of world politics. Bringing together an interdisciplinary range of contributors, including historians, political theorists, lawyers, and international relations scholars, this is the first volume of its kind to explore the racial and imperial dimensions of normative debates over global justice.

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Duncan Bell, University of Cambridge
Duncan Bell is a Reader in Political Thought and International Relations at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: empire, race, and global justice Duncan Bell
1. Reparations, history, and the origins of global justice Katrina Forrester
2. The doctor's plot: the origins of the philosophy of human rights Samuel Moyn
3. Corporations, universalism and the domestication of race in international law Sundhya Pahuja
4. Race and global justice Charles W. Mills
5. Association, reciprocity and emancipation: a transnational account of the politics of global justice Inés Valdez
6. Global justice: just another modernisation theory? Anne Phillips
7. Globalizing global justice Margaret Kohn
8. Challenging liberal belief: Edward said and the critical practice of history Jeanne Morefield
9. Cosmopolitan just war and coloniality Kimberley Hutchings
10. Indigenous peoples, settler colonialism, and global justice in Anglo-America Robert Nichols
11. Decolonizing borders, self-determination, and global justice Catherine Lu.

More information here
(source: ESCLH Blog)

JOB: University Lecturer in the History of International Political Thought c.1700 to the Present (Cambridge: Faculty of History); DEADLINE 28 MAR 2019

(image source: Cambridge University)

Job description:

The Faculty of History wishes to appoint a University Lecturer in the History of International Political Thought c.1700 to the Present. It is expected that the successful candidate will take up the post, based in central Cambridge, with effect from 1 October 2019.Candidates must be able to demonstrate their ability to develop this fast-expanding field of History through research and teaching. The main duties of the post will include teaching, supervising and examining at graduate and undergraduate levels. The successful candidate will be expected to research and publish in his or her field at the highest level of excellence, and to contribute to the History Faculty's flourishing research culture.Candidates should demonstrate excellent communication, interpersonal, and organisational skills; show a commitment to supporting students academically; and be able and ready to co-operate in Faculty affairs, including undertaking administration. The Faculty welcomes applications from both early-career scholars and those who have established careers. By the start of the appointment, the successful candidate must hold, or be close to completion of, a doctorate (or equivalent) in a relevant field.This is a permanent appointment to retirement age, subject to the successful completion of an initial 5 year probationary period.Please also see the Further Particulars provided.To apply online for this vacancy, please click on the 'Apply' button below. This will route you to the University's Web Recruitment System, where you will need to register an account (if you have not already) and log in before completing the online application form.Please ensure that you upload any additional documents requested to the 'upload' section of the online application.Applicants seeking further information about this post may contact Professor Tim Harper, Chair of the Faculty of History at histchm@hermes.cam.ac.uk. For Further information about the application process please contact the Faculty's HR Administrator, Ms Joanne Pearson (e-mail: jobs@hist.cam.ac.uk, telephone: +44 (0)1223 335350). Please quote reference JJ17296 on your application and in any correspondence about this vacancy.Once an offer of employment has been accepted, the successful candidate will be required to undergo a health assessment.The University values diversity and is committed to equality of opportunity.The University has a responsibility to ensure that all employees are eligible to live and work in the UK.

More information here.

BOOK: Arthur EYFFINGER, T.M.C. Asser (1838-1913) [Legal History Library/Studies in the History of International Law] (Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhof/Brill, July 2019), 2 vol., € 175

(image source: Brill)

Book abstract:

This publication presents a comprehensive review of the life and intellectual legacy of the Dutch Nobel Peace laureate and father of the Hague tradition of international law. It is the first research study based on a wealth of recently disclosed private and family files, and deepens and modifies all earlier evaluations. It enlarges on Asser’s achievements as legal practitioner, university don, pioneer of private international law, diplomat and arbitrator, and State Councillor. It discusses his durable impact as founder of international law bodies and institutions. It likewise highlights the impressive Asser family tradition that exemplifies 19th-century Jewish emancipation in Amsterdam, addresses Asser’s youth and student years, his role as family man and the impact of personal drama on his career.

On the author:

Arthur Eyffinger is classicist (PhD Amsterdam 1981) and law historian, co-founder of the Grotiana Foundation (1978) and former Head Librarian of the International Court of Justice (1988-2003). He edited works of Hugo Grotius and published monographs on International The Hague. 

(source: Brill)

JOBS: PhD and Postdoc Scholarships, Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, Frankfurt am Main (DEADLINE 31 MAY 2019)

(source: blogger)

Every year we welcome numerous researchers and scholarship holders from all over the world who come to Frankfurt in order to get in touch with other researchers in a productive working atmosphere and to conduct research in our library with its many special collections.

The MPIeR awards several fellowships for a research stay at the Institute in 2020.

For 2020 the main areas of research pursued at the Institute are:

Department I – Professor Stefan Vogenauer

• Legal transfer in the common law world
• History of European Union Law
• Fundamental issues concerning legal reception

Department II – Professor Thomas Duve

• History of legal historiography: traditions of writing legal history
• Law and diversity: legal historical perspectives
• Glocalicing normativities in Iberian Imperial territories (15th – 19th century)

Deadline for applications is May 31st 2019.

(source: MPIeR)

BLOGPOST: Franck LATTY on Christine de Pisan

(Source: Wikipedia)

EJIL: Talk!, the blog of the European Journal of International Law, recently published a text by Professor Latty on Christine de Pisan.

At the start of 2019 and the year long campaign designed around International Women’s Day on 8 March 2019, it may be particularly apt for the readers of EJIL: Talk! to consider Christine de Pisan (around 1365 – around 1430), a medieval woman of letters, as one of the founders of international law – even if somewhat surprising for several reasons […]

Read the full post here

(source: ESCLH Blog)

ADVANCE ARTICLE: Ignacio DE LA RASILLA DEL MORAL, "The Problem of Periodization in the History of International Law" (Law & History Review)

(image source: Cambridge Core)

Abstract:

"To illustrate the central if often overlooked role that periodization plays in the history of international law, this article proceeds in three parts. The first part critically discusses six approaches to periodization in the history of international law: the hegemonic, the Eurocentric universalist, the state-centric, the doctrinal, the institutional, and the normative. The second part studies how, in the wake of the recent “turn to history” in international legal scholarship, a new critical historiography has problematized the question of periodization because of the homogenizing effect and the “teleology of progress” to which periodization is interpreted as contributing. This part also shows that even despite a radical postmodern critique of periodization that distrusts “great meta-narratives,” alternative meta-narratives and ideological frameworks nonetheless structure other periodizations for contemporary historians of international law. The third part elaborates on the heuristic potential of a multiperspective approach to the question of periodization, and addresses the notion of “alternative periodization.” With examples from a new wave of literature on the history of international law, it illustrates its value as a launch pad for the “formation of new formerly unknown periods,” a task that can be considered “an essential part of historiographical innovation.”

Read the article on Cambridge Core (open access).

(source: Legal History Blog)

BOOK: Ian HUNTER and Richard WHATMORE (eds.), Philosophy, Rights and Natural Law - Essays in Honour of Knud Haakonssen (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019). ISBN 9781474449229, $130.00

(Source: OUP)

Oxford University Press is publishing a celebratory collection of essays on philosophy, rights and natural law, inspired by the work of Knud Haakonssen.

ABOUT THE BOOK

A celebratory collection of essays on philosophy, rights and natural law, inspired by the work of Knud Haakonssen

Over his long and illustrious career, Knud Haakonssen has explored the role of natural law in formulating doctrines of obligation and rights in accordance with the interests of early modern polities and churches. A hallmark of his approach has been to show how natural law in early modern Europe was not a unified doctrine, but a field of crosscutting idioms that prosecuted competing political and juridical programmes.

The essays collected in this volume range across this exciting and contested field. These studies acknowledge Haakonssen's immense academic achievement and give us new insights into the cultural and political role of law and rights in a variety of historical contexts and circumstances.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Ian Hunter is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Queensland. He is author of The Secularisation of the Confessional State: The Political Thought of Christian Thomasius (Cambridge University Press, 2007). He is co-editor of Law and Politics in British Colonial Thought (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), Essays on Church, State and Politics(Liberty Fund, 2007), The Philosopher in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2006), Heresy in Transition (Ashgate, 2005) and Natural Law and Civil Sovereignty(Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).

Richard Whatmore is Professor of History at the University of St Andrews and Director of the St Andrews Institute of Intellectual History. He is the author of What is Intellectual History? (Polity, 2015), Against War and Empire (Yale University Press, 2012) and Republicanism and the French Revolution (OUP, 2000). He is the co-editor of Commerce and Peace in the Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Companion to Intellectual History (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), David Hume (Ashgate, 2013), Advances in Intellectual History (Palgrave, 2006) and Economy, Polity and Society: Essays in British Intellectual History, 2 volumes (Cambridge University Press, 2000).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Part I: Rights, Religion and Morality

1. Calvinists, Arminians, Socinians: Popular Sovereignty and Natural Rights in Early Modern Political Thought

James Moore

2. Truth and Toleration in the Early Modern Period

Maria Rosa Antognazza

3. The History of the History of Ethics and Emblematic Passages

Aaron Garrett

4. Natural law and Natural Rights in Early Enlightenment Copenhagen

Mads Jensen

Part II: Natural Law and the Philosophers

5. Natural Equality and Natural Law in Locke's Two Treatises

Kari Saastamoinen

6. Dignity and Equality in Pufendorf's Natural Law Theory

Simone Zurbuchen

7. Theory and Practice in the Natural Law of Christian Thomasius

Ian Hunter

8. The iura connata in the Natural Law of Christian Wolff

Frank Grunert

9. Hume's Peculiar Definition of Justice

James A. Harris

Part III: Rights and Reform

10. Economising Natural Law: Pufendorf on Moral Quantities and Sumptuary Legislation

Michael Seidler

11. The Legacy of Smith's Jurisprudence in Late-Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh

John W. Cairns

12. Declaring Rights: Bentham and the Rights of Man

David Lieberman

13. Rights After the Revolutions

Richard Whatmore

Index

More information here
(source: ESCLH Blog)

JOURNAL: International Affairs, Vol. 95 (No.1), 2019

(Source: OUP)

The latest issue of the journal International Affairs is dedicated to “World Politics 100 Years After the Paris Peace Conference”.

Contents:

World Politics 100 Years After the Paris Peace Conference

Margaret MacMillan, Anand Menon, & Patrick Quinton-Brown, Introduction: world politics 100 years after the Paris peace conference
First paragraph:

One hundred years ago the Treaty of Versailles, the centrepiece of a set of treaties and agreements collectively known as the Paris peace settlements, was signed in the glittering Hall of Mirrors in the former home of France's Sun King. For some, the war those settlements brought to an end was a distinct period in international relations, one dominated for the preceding century by a European state system that had endured since the Middle Ages

Barry Eichengreen, Versailles: the economic legacy
Abstract:

From the standpoint of international economic relations, the key implications of the Versailles Treaty were as follows. Signatories committed their countries to reconstructing a free and open multilateral trading system such as had existed before the First World War. Other economic institutions and arrangements, as distinct from the trading system, were noteworthy only to the extent that they worked towards this paramount goal. Moreover, in so far as those other arrangements, starting with the gold standard and international financial relations, had been integral to the success of the prewar trading system, there was a presumption that they too should be reconstructed along prewar lines. This approach was subject to multiple conflicts and contradictions. It did not take account of how the economic world had changed, creating a mismatch between prewar institutions and postwar circumstances. It enshrined—indeed, it gave legal content to—the conventional wisdom that to the victor go the economic spoils by imposing that self-same reparations burden on Germany and the other defeated Central Powers. It highlighted the conflicted nature of American attitudes towards management of the international economic system. And it did not give the Soviet Union, ultimately to emerge as the second of the twentieth century's two Great Powers, a seat at the table. While seeking to avoid exaggerating the parallels, I argue that the structure of international economic relations in the wake of the Cold War resembles in important respects the structure of those relations after the First World War.

Glenda Sluga, Remembering 1919: international organizations and the future of international order
Abstract:

Several of the world's intergovernmental organizations have now existed for longer than many nation-states. The centenary of the peacemaking that ended the First World War offers the opportunity of making good policy use of new histories that inform us about the shifting horizon of international expectations, the social dimensions of international thinking and international political cultures, their nation-state roots, and the sum of this relatively marginalized international past. The aim of this article is to draw together the various strands of the new historical work undertaken in the last decade in order to orientate 1919 as a moment that launched the world into a century of often profound discussion about international organizations as necessary instruments of multilateralism. This discussion sometimes dwindled, and it did not prevent wars. However, it had significant impacts: from the spectrum of ideas it brought to bear on the question of how to solve the world's most serious problems, to the practices of international governance it helped introduce. As importantly, the international order shaped in 1919 created unprecedented political spaces for representing the diverse interests of the world's populations, even the stateless. At crucial moments in the twentieth century, world-scale solutions to world-scale problems gave people ideas—even when the window of opportunity was small. If this history is good for anything, I argue that it might be for orientating our present in relation to that international past, and how we begin to imagine the future of the international order, as we know it.

Oona A. Hathaway & Scott J. Shapiro, International law and its transformation through the outlawry of war
Abstract:

The First World War was the last great war of what we have called the ‘old world order’—the legal regime that European states adopted in the seventeenth century and spent the next three centuries imposing on the rest of the globe. This order formed the basis of what scholars call ‘classical international law’. But this body of rules differed starkly from the ones that govern today: the old world order did not just sanction war, it relied on and rewarded it. States were permitted to wage war to right any legal wrong, and the right of the victors to extract territory and treasure from the losers was legally guaranteed. That all began to change when the nations of the world decided to outlaw war in the 1928 Kellogg–Briand treaty. As a result, the rules governing international behaviour have transformed radically—indeed, they are the polar opposite of what they once were. This article describes the decision to outlaw war and the transformation it unleashed in the world order generally, and in international law specifically. We argue that a simple but perplexing fact—that modern international law prohibits states from using force to enforce international law—is key to understanding international law and state behavior in the modern era.

Joseph S. Nye, Jr, The rise and fall of American hegemony from Wilson to Trump
Abstract:

A century ago, Woodrow Wilson changed America's place in the world when he sent two million men to fight in Europe, but America withdrew into isolationism in the 1930s. After the Second World War, Harry Truman and others created a framework of permanent alliances and multilateral institutions that became known as the ‘liberal international order’ or ‘Pax Americana’. Those terms have become obsolete as descriptions of the US place in the world, but the need for the largest countries to provide public goods remains. An open international order covers political–military affairs; economic relations; ecological relations; and human rights. It remains to be seen to what degree these depend on each other and what will remain as the 1945 package is unpacked. Wilson's legacy of developing international institutions continues to make sense. Leadership is not the same as domination, and it will need to be shared. There have always been degrees of leadership and degrees of influence during the seven decades of American pre-eminence after 1945. Now with less preponderance and a more complex world, American exceptionalism in terms of its economic and military power should focus on sharing the provision of global public goods, particularly those that require ‘power with’ others. Wilson's century old insights about international institutions and a rules-based order will remain crucial, but America's place in that world may be threatened more by the rise of populist politics at home than the rise of other powers abroad.

Jane Burbank & Frederick Cooper, Empires after 1919: old, new, transformed
Abstract:

1919 was not the death knell of empires: it opened new imperial possibilities. The empires of the losers were destroyed; victors added new territories and a new element—the mandate—to their repertoires; Japan was recognized as a major imperial actor; the Soviet Union constituted a new form of empire; Germany, chafing at its exclusion from the world of empires, created the Third Reich; the US, after promoting a new international order, developed its own way of exercising power at a distance. This article describes the varied trajectories of empires in the decades after the First World War. It notes changes in discourse and international institutions after 1919, but argues against fitting 1919 into a linear narrative of ‘empire to nation-state’. Self-determination proved a problematic concept both where it was implemented and where it was not. The forced breakup of the Ottoman Empire led to conflicts that have yet to be resolved. Anti-colonial movements fought oppression, but often sought alternatives to both old-style empires and the territorial state. Colonial empires were able to contain challenges, refine their methods of rule and claim international legitimacy. It took another catastrophe for colonial empires to be fundamentally threatened—by a war that was more the result of the reconfiguration of empires after 1919 than of their decline. The Japanese takeover of southeast Asia began the unraveling of European empires after 1945. Even then, political possibilities that reach well beyond the national continued to shape our world.

Lawrence Freedman, The rise and fall of Great Power wars

Abstract:

The Great War now stands as the prime example of the folly of war, an exercise in futility that was terrible in its slaughter. Yet this did not mark the end of Great Power wars. The victors believed that Germany should be penalized for its role in starting the war but this created a new set of grievances that Hitler played upon. In addition, while the norm of self-determination was an attempt to address grievances before they led to violence, the breakup of the old continental empires after 1919 was accompanied by great violence. Something similar happened as a result of the irresistible processes of decolonization after 1945. The growth of civil wars is one reason why the Great War was not the war to end all wars. As the potential gains from war declined the costs increased. The First World War picked up and accentuated tendencies in military practice, particularly when it came to targeting civilians, which had been in play before 1914. These then set the terms for the next war to be even more destructive. This was particularly true as aircraft were introduced into war as being most suitable for use against urban populations. Although this was not confirmed by the practice of air power during the Second World War, which did not achieve the anticipated strategic effects, the concluding introduction of nuclear weapons and the immediate surrender of Japan did lead to a decisive change in perceptions of the costs of Great Power war.

Yuen Foong Khong, Power as prestige in world politics
Abstract:

Power is shifting from the West to the East. Asia is experiencing the initial throes of this shift, where the key protagonists are the United States, the established power or hegemon, and China, the rising challenger and peer competitor. This article argues that the ongoing geopolitical competition between the United States and China is best viewed as a competition over the hierarchy of prestige, with China seeking to replace the US as the most prestigious state in the international system within the next thirty years. Although the competition is a global one, with China having made significant economic–political inroads into Africa, Latin America and even Europe, Asia is where China must establish its prestige or ‘reputation for power’ in the first instance. China seeks the top seat in the hierarchy of prestige, and the US will do everything in its power to maintain its pole position, because the state with the greatest reputation for power gets to govern the region: it will attract more followers, regional powers will defer to and accommodate it, and it will play a decisive role in shaping the rules and institutions of international relations. In a word, the state at the top of the prestige hierarchy gets to translate its power into the political outcomes it desires with minimal resistance and maximum flexibility.

Rosemary Foot, Remembering the past to secure the present: Versailles legacies in a resurgent China
Abstract:

In the century since the signature of the Treaty of Versailles, China's international status and material condition have been fundamentally transformed. The People's Republic has become powerful in ways that probably would have astonished the leaders of the early Republic of China, first established in 1911. These changes do not mean, however, that there are not potent legacies from China's nineteenth-century and Versailles-era experiences. In particular, the Versailles agreement showed China that gaining full membership of the international society of states would not be easy, despite its having joined the Allied side in the war effort. China's failure to gain either restitution of the territory of Shandong or proper acknowledgement of its status as a legally sovereign state added to the Chinese distrust of the West and Japan born out of their exploitative activities in China. The subsequent May Fourth nationalist demonstration of 1919 was the first of many prominent displays of nationalist outrage, a sentiment that provided opportunities for exploitation by successive Chinese governments. The article shows how the trials associated with removing China's unequal status in international politics condition and, in some respects, deform Chinese attitudes towards international politics to this day. In particular, it asks why China's remarkable resurgence has not changed official Chinese perceptions of world order, the tenor of its relations with other states and its view of its own place in international society more fundamentally than has in fact been the case

Erik Jones & Anand Menon, Europe: between dream and reality?
Abstract:

European political development since the Treaty of Versailles has gone through four phases. The interwar period was a time of democratic weakness and ethnic conflict that culminated in the Second World War. What followed was a period of division and yet also integration, particularly in western Europe. Western Europeans sought to transcend the nation-state through the promotion of the rule of law. The end of the Cold War suggested the victory of this civilizing mission, but that suggestion was not entirely convincing—not because of the re-emergence of ethnic conflict, but because of the increasing tension between popular and representative democracy. The economic and financial crisis brought that tension to the surface and placed a great strain on the wider integration project. The challenge is how to interpret this arc in the narrative of European history. Was unification always a dream while division remains a reality?

Margaret MacMillan & Patrick Quinton-Brown, The uses of history in international society: from the Paris peace conference to the present
Abstract:

History has been used—and abused—for centuries. Yet the more familiar notion of ‘history's lessons’—a notion which tends to make most historians uncomfortable, and which surely demands thoroughgoing skepticism—is far from exhaustive of history's uses in the practice and study of international relations. One important and timely subject is the more constitutive role of history in international deliberations over the creation, fragmentation and transformation of nation-states. What follows is a historical comparison of the changing ways in which the past has been used to frame the terms and content of such debates. While we will be exploring the uses of history as a guide or teacher, we propose to examine more specifically and at greater length the growth and persistence of newer uses: first, to bolster claims to independence and territory; and second, in demanding restitution in the form of financial reparations, apologies and other social privileges. By examining the ways in which history was used 100 years ago at the end of the First World War and in recent episodes of the Cold War and post-Cold War eras, we hope to show continuities and differences. What specialists must appreciate is that history is being used and will continue to be used not only within the confines of the academy, but within international society itself, where it may serve as a foundation for arbitrating political disagreements. If anything, non-specialist and popular reliance on history has grown, possibly because other forms of authority have attenuated.

(Source: ESCLH Blog)