CONFERENCE: The League of Nations Decentred: Law, Crises and Legacies (Melbourne, 17-19 July 2019)

(Source: LPIL.org)

Melbourne Law School’s Laureate Program in International Law is hosting an international conference on the League of Nations next month. The draft programme is now available.

Conveners: Luís Bogliolo, Kathryn Greenman, Anne Orford, and Ntina Tzouvala.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: Professor Fleur Johns (University of New South Wales Faculty of Law); Professor Balakrishnan Rajagopal (Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Almost a hundred years after the creation of the League of Nations, it is still commonly remembered as a failure in a period of chaos and disorder. Recently, however, a growing literature has begun a reappraisal of this historiography, looking at the role of the League of Nations beyond its frustrations and disillusionments in collective security. This new surge of critical studies has led to a more complex and multifaceted understanding of the League, exploring its legacies and impacts at a time of renewed economic crises and of deepening conflicting visions of international order. On the centenary of its foundation, we are taking this further by looking at the League of Nations with a view from the South. Our aim is to decentre the League and to explore competing visions of international order, law and institutions that resonate in our contemporary world.

This conference will bring together scholars working in law, history, international relations, and political theory to think critically about the League of Nations, law, institutions, practices, ideologies and technologies in relation to or with a view from the South. Themes for discussion include:

• The League of Nations and the regulation of international violence
• Sovereignty, empires, and the shifting boundaries of international authority
• Intervention (military, economic, political) in the context of the League
• Anti-colonialism, the rise of transnational social movements (socialism, feminism, national liberation)
• Competing internationalisms and visions of international order
• The rise of fascism and Nazism
• Petitioning, oversight, publicity and new arenas of international politics
• Humanitarianism, humanitarian assistance and governance
• Adjudication, arbitration, and the Permanent Court of International Justice
• The relationship between the League of Nations and contemporary or succeeding international institutions
• The Mandates system
• Indigenous peoples and the League of Nations
• Codification and the role of international law
• Major crises of the League of Nations (eg Ethiopia, Manchuria)
• Economic and social regulation and authority

Please find the draft program here.

All info can be found here

(source: ESCLH Blog)

ESIL ANNUAL CONFERENCE ATHENS 2019: IG History of International Law Event (12 SEP 2019): New Histories of Sovereigns and Sovereignties

European Society of International Law

Interest Group on the History of International Law

New Histories of Sovereigns and Sovereignties

ESIL Athens 2019 Meeting

(image source: ESIL)

Amphitheatre, Law Library, 17-19 Mavromichali str. Athens

(for directions see: https://esilathens2019.gr/venues/)

08.15-13.30

Panel One: Sovereignty before the Twentieth Century

Greg Ablavsky (Stanford) — ‘Species of Sovereignty: Native American Nationhood, the United States, and International Law, 1783–1795’

Connor McBain (Glasgow) — ‘Parcel of Rogues in a Nation: The Story of the Darien Company and the Forgotten Role of Corporate Sovereignty in Scots Colonisation of the “New World”’

Commentator: Markus Beham (Passau)

————

Panel Two: Sovereignty in the Twentieth Century

Diane Marie Amann (Georgia) — ‘Intersectional Sovereignties: Dr Aline Chalufour, Woman at Nuremberg — and at Paris, Ottawa, and Dalat’

Tsvetelina van Benthem (Oxford) — ‘Sovereignty, Sanctions and Functionalism’

Commentator: Jan Lemnitzer (University of Southern Denmark)

Amphitheatre, Law Library, 17-19 Mavromichali str. Athens

(for directions see: https://esilathens2019.gr/venues/)

08.15-13.30

Panel One: Sovereignty in before the Twentieth Century

Greg Ablavsky (Stanford) — ‘Species of Sovereignty: Native American Nationhood, the United States, and International Law, 1783–1795’

Connor McBain (Glasgow) — ‘Parcel of Rogues in a Nation: The Story of the Darien Company and the Forgotten Role of Corporate Sovereignty in Scots Colonisation of the “New World”’

Commentator: Markus Beham (Passau)

————

Panel Two: Sovereignty in the Twentieth Century

Diane Marie Amann (Georgia) — ‘Intersectional Sovereignties: Dr Aline Chalufour, Woman at Nuremberg — and at Paris, Ottawa, and Dalat’

Tsvetelina van Benthem (Oxford) — ‘Sovereignty and Functionalism’

Commentator: Jan Lemnitzer (Southern Denmark)

(see conference website)

BOOK: Alla POZDNAKOVA, (ed.), Russian Revolutions of 1917: Scandinavian Perspectives (London: Wildy, Simmonds and Hill Publishing, 2019). ISBN 9780854902750, €65.40

(Source: Wildy, Simmonds and Hill Publishing)

Wildy, Simmonds and Hill Publishing has published an edited collection on Scandinavian perspectives to the Russian revolution of 1917.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Ten legal scholars explore facets of the 1917 Russian revolutions from the standpoint of Russian law (transition to a market economy), Comparative law (the impact of the 1917 Revolutions on the Soviet and post-Soviet legal experience; the development of comparative legal studies in Russia, and similarities and differences between Soviet and German Nazi law), and public international law (Russian fishing activities off Finnmark; Norwegian recognition policies vis-a-vis Russia; and the enduring importance of the Martens Clause in international humanitarian law). 

The volume is complemented by a substantial selection of documents on Scandinavian-Russian legal relations between 1917 and 1928. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alla Pozdnakova is Professor of Law at the University of Oslo in Norway 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction (Alla Pozdnakova)
History of the 1917 Russian Revolution(s): An Overview (Asmund Egge)

RUSSIAN LAW
Ten Years that Shook the World: How Russia Became a Market Economy - Or Did It? (Kaj Hober)
Real Property Privatization in Pre- and Post-Soviet Russia: Different or the Same? (Tina Soliman Hunter)

COMPARATIVE LAW
The Impact of the Russian Revolution: A Century of Revolutionary Law (William E. Butler)
Russian Comparative Law Before and After the 1917 Revolutions(Irina Fodchenko)
Law and the Russian Revolution: A Comparison with the Nazi Approach to Law (Hans Petter Graver)

INTERNATIONAL LAW
Russian Fishing Activities Off the Coast of Finnmark: A Legal History (Kirsti Strom Bull)
Revolution, Requisition, and Recognition: Norwegian-Soviet Relations, 1917-1925 (Ola Mestad)
Importance of the Martens Clause for the Development of International Humanitarian Law (Gentian Zyberi)

DOCUMENTS ON SCANDINAVIAN/RUSSIAN RELATIONS
Scandinavian Treaties with the RSFSR and the USSR; 1918-1928 (William E. Butler)
- Denmark
- Finland
- Iceland
- Norway
- Sweden

INDEX OF NAMES

More information here

(source: ESCLH Blog)

JOURNAL: Journal of the History of International Law/Revue d'histoire du droit international XX (2019), No. 1

(image source: Brill)

ONUMA Yasuaki (1946-2018) (Lauri Mälksoo) (OPEN ACCESS)

Beyond Anachronism: Histories of International Law and Global Legal Politics (Lauren Benton)
Abstract:

This article presents a critique of recent writings, mainly by Anne Orford, of historical methodologies in international law as supposedly focused on rooting out anachronism and separating history from the politics of the present. First, the article shows that this (mis)characterization of historical methods is based on a misreading of the work of Quentin Skinner and the Cambridge School. Second, it argues that Orford errs in assuming that the Cambridge School is representative of historical approaches. The article exposes this error by tracing key strands of socio-legal study of global legal history. That literature has generated new insights about such topics as vernacular discourses of international law and the influence of patterns of colonial politics on global ordering. This new global legal history takes ‘legal politics’ as its object of analysis while merging the study of praxis and theory in the history of international law.

Freebooters and Free Traders: English Colonial Prize Jurisdiction in the West Indies 1655–1670 (Vile Kari)
Abstract:

Colonial prize courts provided two significant contributions to the English imperial efforts in the West Indies. First, they played a key role in the enforcement of the new colonial power’s own trade monopoly against foreign interlopers and smugglers. Secondly, they helped the newcomer empire to rein in the buccaneers and capers who had populated the Caribbean for decades and to re-deploy them as commissioned privateers. This paper explores in detail the emergence of the British colonial prize jurisdiction after the English conquest of Jamaica in 1655. It shows how colonial prize courts emerged organically from the English expansion in the West Indies, with powers and duties assigned incrementally to colonial administrators to address the practical needs of the growing empire in breaking the Spanish trade monopoly and establishing its own.

Restricted Access ‘An Atmosphere of Genuine Solidarity and Brotherhood’: Hernán Santa-Cruz and a Forgotten Latin American Contribution to Social Rights (Daniel Ricardo Quiroga-Villamarín)
Abstract:

Latin America played a crucial role in furthering the cause of human rights at the nascent United Nations (UN) when great powers were mostly interested in limiting the scope to issues of collective security. Following this line of thought, this article aims to understand the Latin American contributions to the promotion of ESCRs in both global and regional debates by tracing the figure of the Chilean diplomat Hernán Santa-Cruz and his efforts as both a drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and founder of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). In Santa-Cruz’s silhouette we can find a vivid example of Latin American thought regarding social rights, marked by the intersections and contradictions of regional discourses such as social Catholicism, socialist constitutionalism, and developmentalist economic theories.

A New Architecture of Justice: Dan Kiley’s Design for the Nuremberg Trials (Mark Somos & Morgan Gostwyck-Lewis)
Abstract:

Courtroom 600 in the Nuremberg Palace of Justice is one of the most iconic sites in the history of international criminal law. Yet the extensive literature on Courtroom 600 neglects the original 1945 drawings by the architect Dan Kiley, now in the archives of the Harvard Design School. This article revises our understanding of Courtroom 600 in light of these drawings. Among other findings it argues that Kiley, rather than Jackson or the Office of Strategic Services, was the main source of design decisions; that the secondary literature overemphasises film at the expense of architecture; and that the design of both Courtroom 600 and the entire reconstruction of the Palace of Justice offer valuable insights into this key moment in the history of international law.

 Reviews:

• The Internationalists. How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World, written by Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro (Agatha Verdebout)
• The Politics of Commercial Treaties in the Eighteenth Century. Balance of Power, Balance of Trade, edited by Antonella Alimento and Koen Stapelbroek (Dave De ruysscher) (OPEN ACCESS)
• Incarner le droit international. La Belgique et ses juristes : du mythe juridique au déclassement international (1914–1940), written by Vincent Genin (Olivier Corten) (OPEN ACCESS)
• Philosophy of International Law, written by Anthony Carty (Florian Couveinhes Matsumoto)

More information with Brill.

BOOK: Simon CHESTERMAN, David M. MALONE & Santiago VILLALPANDO (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of United Nations Treaties [Oxford Handbooks] (Oxford: OUP, 2019), 720 p. ISBN 9780190947842, € 100

(image source: OUP)

Book abstract:

The United Nations is a vital part of the international order. Yet this book argues that the greatest contribution of the UN is not what it has achieved (improvements in health and economic development, for example) or avoided (global war, say, or the use of weapons of mass destruction). It is, instead, the process through which the UN has transformed the structure of international law to expand the range and depth of subjects covered by treaties. This handbook offers the first sustained analysis of the UN as a forum in which and an institution through which treaties are negotiated and implemented. Chapters are written by authors from different fields, including academics and practitioners; lawyers and specialists from other social sciences (international relations, history, and science); professionals with an established reputation in the field; younger researchers and diplomats involved in the negotiation of multilateral treaties; and scholars with a broader view on the issues involved. The volume thus provides unique insights into UN treaty-making. Through the thematic and technical parts, it also offers a lens through which to view challenges lying ahead and the possibilities and limitations of this understudied aspect of international law and relations.

Author information:

Simon Chesterman, Dean and Professor of Law, National University of Singapore, David M. Malone, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Rector, UN University (Tokyo), and Santiago Villalpando, Chief of the Treaty Section, United Nations Office of Legal Affairs
Simon Chesterman is Dean of the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law and Editor of the Asian Journal of International Law. David M. Malone is Under-Secretary General of the United Nations and Rector of the UN University, headquartered in Tokyo. Santiago Villalpando is the Legal Advisor of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Contributors:
Hirad Abtahi is the Legal Adviser, Head of the Legal and Enforcement Unit, Presidency at the International Criminal Court
Jonathan Agar is a Legal Officer with the UN Office of Legal Affairs
Davinia Aziz is Senior State Counsel in the International Affairs Division, Attorney-General's Chambers, Singapore
David Bewley-Taylor is Professor of International Relations and Public Policy at Swansea University
Pierre Bodeau-Livinec is Professor of Public law at the University Paris Nanterre
Alan Boyle is Emeritus Professor of Public International Law at the University of Edinburgh
Gian Luca Burci is Adjunct Professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Geneva
Roberto Cassar is a LLM (cum laude) in Advanced Studies in Air and Space Law, International Institute of Air and Space Law at Leiden University
Hilary Charlesworth is a Melbourne Laureate Professor at Melbourne Law School and a Distinguished Professor at the Australian National University.
Simon Chesterman is Dean and Professor at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law
Jane Connors is the United Nations Victims' Rights Advocate and former International Advocacy Director Law and Policy at Amnesty International. Her contribution was written before she entered into her current role.
Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger is Senior Director of the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law, Full Professor of International Law at the University of Waterloo, and an LCIL and CEENRG Fellow at the University of Cambridge
Sanderijn Duquet is a Belgian diplomat and an Associate Research Fellow, Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, University of Leuven
Malgosia Fitzmaurice is Professor of Public International Law, Department of Law at the Queen Mary University of London
Giorgio Gaja is a Judge at the International Court of Justice
Guy S. Goodwin-Gill is Professor of Law and Acting Director, Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at the University of New South Wales, and Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford
Alexandra Harrington is Lead Counsel for Governance & Intergenerational Justice at the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law
Corina Heri is a postdoctoral researcher at the Amsterdam Centre for International Law at the University of Amsterdam
Arancha Hinojal-Oyarbide is a Legal Officer in the Treaty Section at the UN Office of Legal Affairs
Alexandra Ivanovic is a former Australian solicitor and mediator, and the Senior Manager in the Office of the Rector at the United Nations University
Martin Jelsma is the Drugs and Democracy Programme Director at the Transnational Institute Amsterdam
Sam Johnston is a Senior Fellow, Faculty of Law at the University of Melbourne,
Ian Johnstone is Dean ad interim and Professor of International Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University
Jan Klabbers is a Professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki
Helen Keller is a Judge at the European Court of Human Rights and Professor of Public Law, European and Public International Law at the University of Zurich.
Barry Kellman is Professor of Law at the DePaul College of Law, DePaul University
Philippe Kirsch is a former Judge and first President of the International Criminal Court
Pierre Klein is a Professor of international law, Centre of International Law, Université libre de Bruxelles
Tommy Koh is Ambassador-At-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore and Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore
Edward Kwakwa is Senior Director, Department for Traditional Knowledge and Global Challenges at the World Intellectual Property Organization
David M. Malone is Rector of the United Nations University and UN Under-Secretary-General
Tanja Masson-Zwaan is Assistant Professor and Deputy Director of the International Institute of Air and Space Law at Leiden University
Stephen Mathias is Assistant Secretary-General for Legal Affairs at the UN Office of Legal Affairs
Makane Moïse Mbengue is Professor of International Law at the University of Geneva Law School
Christel Mobech is a Human Rights Officer with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and a former Associate Legal Officer in the Treaty Section at the UN Office of Legal Affairs
Corinne Montineri is a Legal Officer, International Trade Law Division at the UN Commission on International Trade Law
A. Rohan Perera is the Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations
George P. Politakis is the Legal Adviser of the International Labour Office
Daniël Prins is Chief of the Conventional Arms Branch at the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs
Bertrand G. Ramcharan is a Former Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights and Under-Secretary-General and Professor at The Graduate Institute, Geneva
Alison See is a Justices' Law Clerk at the Supreme Court of Singapore
Shirley Scott is Professor and Head of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at UNSW Canberra
Tullio Scovazzi is Professor of International Law at the University of Milano-Bicocca
Christian Tams is Professor of International Law, School of Law at the University of Glasgow
Yoshifumi Tanaka is Professor of International Law, Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagen
Allyn Taylor is an Affiliate Professor of Law at the University of Washington
Santiago Villalpando is Chief of the Treaty Section at the UN Office of Legal Affairs
Philippa Webb is Reader (Associate Professor) in Public International Law, The Dickson Poon School of Law at King's College London
Michael Wood is a barrister and Member of the International Law Commission
Jan Wouters is Professor of International Law and International Organizations and Director of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies - Institute for International Law at the University of Leuven
Lionel Yee is a Deputy Attorney-General of Singapore
Salvatore Zappalà is Professor of International Law at the University of Catania 

(source: OUP)

PODCAST: Une histoire des relations internationales [La Fabrique de l'Histoire/France Culture]

La Fabrique de l'Histoire, the daily broadcast on history on France Culture, picked the history of international organizations as its theme from 10 to 13 June.

Comment au XIXe siècle, les ouvriers se sont-ils organisés pour lutter contre la mondialisation du capital et la mise en concurrence des travailleurs ? Et ce à l'échelle internationale ? L'historien Nicolas Delalande retrace la naissance en 1864 de l’Association Internationale des Travailleurs.


Institution la plus ancienne du système des Nations Unies, l'O.I.T. fête cette année son centenaire. L'occasion de revenir sur l'histoire de l'organisation mondiale qui fait autorité pour le monde du travail et défend les droits des travailleurs depuis 1919.

BOOK: Joseph Matthias Gérard DE RAYNEVAL, The Last Waltz of the Law of Nations (transl. Jean ALLAIN) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). ISBN 9780198725138, $99.00

(Source: OUP)

Oxford University Press is publishing the first English translation of de Rayneval’s 1803 classic The Institutions of Natural Law and the Law of Nations.

ABOUT THE BOOK

This work is a translation of de Rayneval's 1803 classic The Institutions of Natural Law and the Law of Nations. Having been translated into Spanish shortly after its appearance, The Institutions was the reference point of international law for much of the French- and Spanish-speaking world during the Nineteenth Century. As a result, arguably, it is the single most important text of international law to appear between the 1814 Congress of Vienna and the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.

This, the first ever English translation of de Rayneval's The Institutions, provides the English-language world with the last text conceived of, and written, during the era of bilateral, European, Law of Nations; before the waltz into the Concert of Europe and the growth of multilateral diplomacy, with its end point today's United Nations.

De Rayneval is a product of the Ancien Régime who turned to writing The Institutionsafter having been purged from the Quai d’Orsay by the French Revolution. It may be said that in brokering the 1782 Peace of Paris which saw the United Kingdom recognise the United States of America, that Rayneval ended the war which his brother started; as it was Conrad-Alexandre de Rayneval who was the architect of the previous French policy of supporting, and later recognising, the American insurgence of the Thirteen Colonies.

Through his faithful translation and introductory essay, Jean Allain makes this classic work accessible to the new audience of the English-language World.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR/TRANSLATOR

Joseph-Mathias Gerard de Rayneval (1736-1812) was a French diplomat who worked extensively in England and the United States of America during the Revolutionary War, serving as under-secretary of state to Comte de Vergennes (Foreign Minister to Louis XVI).

Jean Allain is a Professor of Law at Monash University, based in Australia and Professor of International Law at the Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull, UK. He also holds an Extraordinary Professorship with the Centre of Human Right, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Prof Allain is founding Editor of the Irish Yearbook of International Law, and author of four monographs and five edited volumes, including The Legal Understanding of Slavery: From the Historical to the Contemporary (Oxford University Press, 2012).

While completing his doctorate at the Graduate Institute of International Studies of the University of Geneva, Switzerland; he clerked for the first President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

More information here

(source: ESCLH Blog)

JOURNAL: London Review of International Law VII (2019), No. 1

(image source: OUP)

Pathetic fallacies: personification and the unruly subjects of international law (Joseph R. Slaughter)
Abstract:

International law is a creole without native speakers, produced at interfaces among distinct languages (often in colonial contact zones), not reducible to its participating tongues. Its figurations of sovereignty and personhood may not obey ordinary grammatical rules. Unruly personifications in Amos Tutuola’s Palm-wine Drinkard, colonial charter company treaties, and legal theory, highlight some pitfalls of confusing legal fictions for social facts.

 The invisibility of race at the ICC: lessons from the US criminal justice system (Randle C. DeFalco & Frédéric Mégret)
Abstract:

Drawing comparisons between the US criminal justice system and international criminal justice, we argue that much of the current discourse concerning the International Criminal Court’s racial politics is impoverished by being grounded in an overly thin understanding of racism that views it as wholly the product of deliberate racist acts rather than embedded in racist structures.

 Critical histories of international law and the repression of disciplinary imagination (Jean d'Aspremont)
Abstract:

This article engages with international lawyers’ growing historiographical appetites. It makes the argument that the critical histories that have come to populate the international legal literature over the last decades continue to be organised along the very lines set by the historical narratives which they seek to question and disrupt. It makes a plea for radical historical critique, that is, for critical histories that move beyond the markers, periodisation, and causal sequencing they seek to displace or disrupt and that embrace a consciously interventionist history-writing attitude with a view to unbridling disciplinary imagination.

The modern and the traditional: Islam, Islamic law and European capitulations in late Qajar Iran (Pierre-Alexandre Cardinal)
Abstract:

This article argues that international law was a technology of Empire reinforcing the modern/colonial divide, especially in the relationship between secularism and Islam. It explores this dynamic in the relationship between Qajar Persia and the imperial powers of Great Britain and Russia at the dawn of the 20th century.

(source: OUP)

BOOK: Prabhash RANJAN, India and Bilateral Investment Treaties: Refusal, Acceptance, Backlash. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). ISBN 9780199493746, $65.00

(Source: OUP)

Oxford University Press is publishing a book dealing with the history of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) in India.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Many countries have started contesting international investment treaties that allow foreign corporations to sue sovereign States for alleged treaty breaches at international arbitration fora. This contestation has taken the form of either countries terminating their investment treaties or walking out of the investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) system. India has also jumped on the contestation bandwagon. As a consequence of being sued by more than 20 foreign investors, India terminated close to 60 investment treaties and adopted a new model bilateral investment treaty (BIT) purportedly to balance investment protection with the host State's right to regulate. This book studies critically India's approach towards BITs by tracing its origin, evolution, and the current state of play. The book does so by locating it in India's economic policy in general and policy towards foreign investment in particular. India's approach towards BITs and its policy towards foreign investment were consistent with each other in the periods of economic nationalism (1947-1990) and economic liberalism (1991-2010). However, post 2010, India's approach to BITs has become protectionist while India's foreign investment policy continues to be liberal. In order to balance investment protection with the State's right to regulate, India needs to evolve its BIT practice based on the twin framework of international rule of law and embedded liberalism.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Prabhash Ranjan, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, South Asian University

Prabhash Ranjan teaches at the Faculty of Law, South Asian University, New Delhi.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword 
Acknowledgements 
1. Introduction
Phase I: Refusal 
2. Economic Nationalism: Refusal to Bilateral Investment Treaties
Phase II: Acceptance 
3. Economic Liberalism: Embracing Bilateral Investment Treaties
4. India's BITs: Mapping the Acceptance I
5. Mapping the Acceptance II
Phase III: Backlash 
6. BITs Come Home to Roost but No Philip Morris Moment Yet!
7. Mapping the Backlash: Once Bitten Many Times Shy!
8. The 2016 Indian Model BIT: Making the BIT Unworkable for Investors
9. Conclusion
Annexure 
Index 
About the Author

More information here

(source: ESCLH Blog)

BOOK: Joseph Matthias Gérard DE RAYNEVAL, The Last Waltz of the Law of Nations (transl. Jean ALLAIN) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). ISBN 9780198725138, $99.00

(Source: OUP)

Oxford University Press is publishing the first English translation of de Rayneval’s 1803 classic The Institutions of Natural Law and the Law of Nations.

ABOUT THE BOOK

This work is a translation of de Rayneval's 1803 classic The Institutions of Natural Law and the Law of Nations. Having been translated into Spanish shortly after its appearance, The Institutions was the reference point of international law for much of the French- and Spanish-speaking world during the Nineteenth Century. As a result, arguably, it is the single most important text of international law to appear between the 1814 Congress of Vienna and the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.

This, the first ever English translation of de Rayneval's The Institutions, provides the English-language world with the last text conceived of, and written, during the era of bilateral, European, Law of Nations; before the waltz into the Concert of Europe and the growth of multilateral diplomacy, with its end point today's United Nations.

De Rayneval is a product of the Ancien Régime who turned to writing The Institutionsafter having been purged from the Quai d’Orsay by the French Revolution. It may be said that in brokering the 1782 Peace of Paris which saw the United Kingdom recognise the United States of America, that Rayneval ended the war which his brother started; as it was Conrad-Alexandre de Rayneval who was the architect of the previous French policy of supporting, and later recognising, the American insurgence of the Thirteen Colonies.

Through his faithful translation and introductory essay, Jean Allain makes this classic work accessible to the new audience of the English-language World.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR/TRANSLATOR

Joseph-Mathias Gerard de Rayneval (1736-1812) was a French diplomat who worked extensively in England and the United States of America during the Revolutionary War, serving as under-secretary of state to Comte de Vergennes (Foreign Minister to Louis XVI).

Jean Allain is a Professor of Law at Monash University, based in Australia and Professor of International Law at the Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull, UK. He also holds an Extraordinary Professorship with the Centre of Human Right, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Prof Allain is founding Editor of the Irish Yearbook of International Law, and author of four monographs and five edited volumes, including The Legal Understanding of Slavery: From the Historical to the Contemporary (Oxford University Press, 2012).

While completing his doctorate at the Graduate Institute of International Studies of the University of Geneva, Switzerland; he clerked for the first President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

More information here

(source: ESCLH Blog)

CONFERENCE: Le traité de Versailles et le pacte de la SDN : un tournant dans l'histoire du droit international ? (Paris: Ecole Normale Supérieure, 28 JUN 2019)

(image source: ENS Droit/Twitter)

The École Normale Supérieure (Paris) is organising a conference on the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 2019.

Click on the image above for the conference programme. Register through the Google Docs-form here.

CONFERENCE: The League of Nations and International law, 1919-1945 (Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen, 13-14 JUN 2019)

(image source: Copenhagen University)

Conference abstract:

The historiography of international law of the 19th and 20th centuries has grown rapidly in the last decades around the excellent work of the legal scholar Martti Koskenniemi and the new Journal of the History of International Law. However, this new wave of scholarship focuses primarily on intellectual history based on biographical studies of leading jurists. Generally, scholars of international legal history have not followed in the footsteps of recent historiographical developments in the fields of human rights or EU law, where historians have systematically used archival resources to go beyond intellectual history and explore the actual legal practice situated in different societal contexts. As a result, historiography of international law has to some extent neglected how the rise of international organisations, and in particular the foundation of the League of Nations (LoN) system, created new legal techniques and shaped the development of international law. Turning to the new historiography of international organisations a similar pattern emerges. While historians in the last decade have fundamentally reassessed the history of the League of Nations, they have not explored its legal dimension. The same goes for recent studies of the technical international organisations that were established from the mid-19th century onwards and became part of the LoN system after 1919. This conference wants to promote a new legal history that explores how the LoN system influenced the development of international law from 1919-1945 based on systematic research of international, state and private archives and a contextual approach to the object of study. The conference is meant to be a first meeting between researchers sharing the agenda outlined above. The aim is that methodological challenges can be identified and the contextual approach to legal history can be further refined. There will be a follow-up conference by the end of 2020 aimed to prepare the papers for a final publication with a leading international publishing house. The conference is open for participation of the general public. Please contact: Thomas Storgaard th.storgaard@hum.ku.dk

Program:

THURSDAY June 13

9.30-10.15 Welcome by Morten Rasmussen

10.15-11.45

The League of Nations system and International Law

• Morten Rasmussen (Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen), The History of the Legal Section of the League of Nations, 1919-1925
• Aden Knaap (Doctoral student, Harvard University), The Court of the Future: The Rise and Fall of World Courts, 1940-45

Discussant: Marcus Payk (Professor, Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg)

11.45-13.00 LUNCH

13.00-15.15

The League of Nations and International Law seen from state actors

• Tomoko Akami (Associate Professor, Australian National University): Making imperial polities anomaly: the Japanese Association of International Law and the League of Nations
• Andrei Mamolea (PhD, Visiting Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for European History, Frankfurt): The Uruguayan approach to International Law during the   League of Nations Era
• Thomas Storgaard (Doctoral student, University of Copenhagen): Unlocking the technology of international law within the German Foreign Office, 1914 – 1920

Discussant: Haakon Ikonomou (Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen)

15.15-15.45 COFFEE

15.45-17.15

The shape of international law and legal discourse

• Megan Donaldson (Junior Research Fellow, University of Cambridge): The Edges of Law: Boundaries of Legal Discourse in the League of Nations
• Leonard Smith (Professor, Oberlin College & Conversatory), Sovereignty and mandates in legal discourse

Discussant: Jan Lemnitzer (Assistant Professor, University of Southern Denmark)

18.00-21.00 DINNER Restaurant Marv og Ben

14 June

8.30-9.00 Publication plans by Morten Rasmussen

9.00-10.30

Lawyers and legal networks I

• Henri de Waele (Professor, Radboud University): A New League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? The Professionalisation of International Law Scholarship and Practice in the Netherlands, 1919-1940
• Jens Wegener (Post.doc., Ruhr-Universität Bochum): International Lawyers of Peace: The League, Philanthropy and the Making of a Transnational Social Space

Discussant: Jean-Michel Guieu (Associate Professor, Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

10.30-10.45 COFFEE

10.45-12.15

Lawyers and legal networks II

• Karin van Leeuwen (Assistant Professor, University of Maastricht): Promoting a 'common international concept' of international law: the Hague Academy and international law teaching, 1923-1940
• Rasmus Søndergaard (Post.doc., Georgetown University): International Law and the League: The Life and Work of Manley O. Hudson

Discussant : Morten Rasmussen (Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen)

12.15-13.30 LUNCH

13.30-14.45

League of Nations policies and international law I

• Omer Aloni (Post.doc. University of Potsdam): Early Environmentalism and Diplomacy at the Birth of Modern International Law: The League of Nations, 1919-1939
• Nicholas Mulder (Doctoral student, Columbia University): League of Nations Sanctions and the Creation of Public War, 1925-1931

Discussant: Daniel Maul (Associate Professor, Oslo University)

14.45-15.15 COFFEE

 15.15-16.45

League of Nations policies and international law II

• Marilena Papadaki (Scientific Associate, K. Koufa Foundation): The Protection of Individual and Minority Rights within the LoN Framework: the case of Nicolas Politis (1872-1942)
• Michel Erpelding, Developing a systematic case-law on individual and minority rights: the role of Felix Calonder (1863-1952) as President of the Mixed Commission for Upper Silesia (1922-1937)

Discussant: Jan Lemnitzer (Assistant Professor, University of Southern Denmark)

17.00-18.00

Conclusion

Marcus Payk (Professor, Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg), Jan Lemnitzer (Assistant Professor, University of Southern Denmark) and Morten Rasmussen (Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen)

Read more here.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Frieden aushandeln in der Frühen Neuzeit (1500-1800) - Rhetoriken - Praktiken - Strategien (Marburg: University of Munster/University of Marburg, 7-9 MAY 2020); DEADLINE 15 JUL 2020

(image: Cardinal Richelieu by Philippe de Champaigne; Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Numerous conflicts emerging between individuals, social groups, communities and states marked early modern life. Just as numerous were strategies and rhetoric of peacemaking. For a long time historical peace studies have focused on political conflicts and peace building processes. Although recent works have looked at cultural perspectives and social practices of conflict negotiation not only in diplomacy but also in other social contexts, different conflict levels and peace processes are usually considered detached from each other - research links between those levels are rare. Although researchers have pointed out that the question of a shared core of early modern peace concepts is a desideratum, (e.g. Schmidt-Voges, 2010, Stuart Caroll 2011) a systematic comparison has not yet been undertaken. 

This conference aims at juxtaposing different spaces and levels of peacemaking in order to work out analogies, common references and frameworks as well as transfer processes. The spaces are close social circles (house, neighbourhood and friendship) the community (protests, uprisings, civil wars, and colonial conflicts) and the intergovernmental level in European, colonial and non-European contexts. The conference aims for bringing together researchers from different disciplines working on early modern societies and historical peace studies to discuss analogies and differences in the patterns of knowledge, perceptions and action in conflict resolution and peace processes.

We understand peace not as an essentialist state of being but as a dynamic and space-related process of communication and attribution. In order to make peace, the actors had to resort to shared concepts of peace as frameworks of reference. This offers links and starting points for a comparative approach. Analysing the different peace processes (successful as well as failed ones) according to the following categories shall facilitate comparisons between the different spaces and levels of action.

- Rhetoric: which semantics and codes do the actors use? In which discourses are they involved, to which systems of knowledge and legitimization do they refer? What kind of media is used? Which rhetoric is conveyed and how?
- Practices: which rituals are central to the different phases of peacemaking? Which practices enable or prevent peace? Which forms of symbolic communication accompany conflict resolution?
- Strategies: how do actors use rhetoric and practices in concrete situations to assert their interests? What role do asymmetrical relations of domination and social hierarchies play here?

The conference will take place from the 7th to the 9th of May in 2020 at the Philipps-University of Marburg. Its concept is an interdisciplinary and thematically transnational one; therefore, contributions from all disciplines working on early modern topics (1500-1800) (e.g. history, social and cultural sciences, art history, literature, theology) are welcome.
Proposals for a 30-minute presentation paper should not exceed one page and include a short Curriculum Vitae. Young researchers are explicitly invited to apply.

Please send your proposals until July 15, 2019 to: ng1@uni-marburg.de.

(Source: HSozKult)

BOOK: David BOUCHER, Appropriating Hobbes: Legacies in Political, Legal, and International Thought (Oxford: Oxford university Press, 2018), 247 p. ISBN 978-0-19-881721-5,

(image source: OUP)

Book abstract:

The aim of this book is not to trace the changing fortunes of the interpretation of one of the most sophisticated and famous political philosophers who ever lived, but to glimpse here and there his place in different contexts, and how his interpreters see their own images reflected in him, or how they define themselves in contrast to him. The main claim is that there is no Hobbes independent of the interpretations that arise from his appropriation in these various contexts and which serve to present him to the world. There is no one perfect context that enables us to get at what Hobbes ‘really meant’, despite the numerous claims to the contrary. He is almost indistinguishable from the context in which he is read. This contention is justified with reference to hermeneutics, and particularly the theories of Gadamer, Koselleck, and Ricoeur, contending that through a process of ‘distanciation’ Hobbes’s writings have been appropriated and commandeered to do service in divergent contexts such as philosophical idealism; debates over the philosophical versus historical understanding of texts; and in ideological disputations, and emblematic characterizations of him by various disciplines such as law, politics, and international relations. The book illustrates the capacity of a text to take on the colouration of its surroundings by exploring and explicating the importance of contexts in reading and understanding how and why particular interpretations of Hobbes have emerged, such as those of Carl Schmitt and Michael Oakeshott, or the international jurists of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

On the author:

David Boucher is Professor of Philosophy and International Relations, Cardiff University

More information with Oxford Scholarship Online.

BOOK: Heikki HAARA, Pufendorf's Theory of Sociability: Passions, Habits and Social Order [The New Synthese Historical Library] (Heidelberg: Springer, 2019), XII + 188 p. ISBN 978-3-319-99324-9, € 63,03

(image source: Springer)

Book abstract:

This book centres on Samuel Pufendorf’s (1632–1694) moral and political philosophy, a subject of recently renewed interest among intellectual historians, philosophers and legal scholars in the English-speaking world. Pufendorf’s significance in conceptualizing sociability in a way that ties moral philosophy, the theory of the state, political economy, and moral psychology together has already been acknowledged, but this book is the first systematic investigation of the moral psychological underpinnings of Pufendorf’s theory of sociability in their own right. Readers will discover how Pufendorf’s psychological and social explanation of sociability plays a crucial role in his natural law theory. By drawing attention to Pufendorf’s scattered remarks and observations on human psychology, a new interpretation of the importance of moral psychology is presented. The author maintains that Pufendorf’s reflection on the psychological and physical capacities of human nature also matters for his description of how people adopt sociability as their moral standard in practice. We see how, since Pufendorf’s interest in human nature is mainly political, moral psychological formulations are important for Pufendorf’s theorizing of social and political order. This work is particularly useful for scholars investigating the multifaceted role of passions and emotions in the history of moral and political philosophy. It also affords a better understanding of what later philosophers, such as Smith, Hume or Rousseau, might have find appealing in Pufendorf’s writings. As such, this book will also interest researchers of the Enlightenment, natural law and early modern philosophy.

On the author:

Heikki Haara is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. He has been a visiting researcher at the Universities of California, Berkeley and Oxford. Currently, he works in the Academy of Finland’s centre for excellence, Reason and Religious Recognition. 

REVIEW: Alberto RINALDI reviews Martti KOSKENNIEMI, Walter RECH & Manuel JIMÉNEZ FONSECA (eds.), International Law and Empire: Historical Explorations (Oxford: OUP, 2017) (American Journal of Legal History Advance Articles)

(image source: Blogger)

First paragraph:

In recent years there has been a real flourishing of historical studies with a focus on international law’s past. The so called ‘turn to history’ is precisely the kind of terrain in which the present volume - in the form of a collection of essays - is situated, as the book explores the various, ambivalent ways in which international law has dealt with and is related to ‘Empire’, understood as a set of manifold practices, discourses, social manifestations, struggles, spaces and people.The authors - coming from a wide range of backgrounds from postcolonial studies to political philosophy - are in fact interested in looking at those episodes, events, theories, and texts...

Read more with Oxford Journals.
See earlier for on this blog for the book description.