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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)
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