BOOK: Anne PETERS & Tom SPARKS (eds.), "The Individual in International Law" (The History and Theory of International Law, OUP, 2024)

Source: OUP

Description:

Shifts across the corpus of international law have brought the international legal system into a closer alignment with the interests of the individual. This has led to a great and growing interest in the roles and status of individuals in international law, and provided new impulses for debate.

The Individual in International Law is an exploration of what is described as the humanisation of international law. It examines how international law has accommodated individuals, and how individual status, rights, and obligations have become denser and more important in the international legal system. Split into two parts, the book analyses the humanisation of international law in different historical periods and from various theoretical perspectives. The first part focuses on the historical evolution of international law, exploring how the interests of individuals have shaped the development of the legal system from antiquity to 1945, providing a counterpoint to State-centric readings of international law's history. The second part contains theoretical debates, critical approaches, and interdisciplinary investigations, offering perspectives from ius positivism and ius naturalism, Marxism, TWAIL, feminism, global law, global constitutionalism, law and economics, and legal anthropology. The book aims to stimulate further research on the humanisation and dehumanisation of new fields ranging from the ius contra bellum to climate law. The editors' introduction and conclusion frame the contributions, draw together their findings, and address critiques comprehensively.

Written by a team of acknowledged experts in their fields, this volume elucidates how the interests, rights, obligations, and responsibilities of individuals have shaped international norms and regimes, and suggests how a reoriented transformative humanism can inform and develop international law in an era of profound ideological, ecological, and technical challenge.

Table of Contents:

Contributors
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: The History and Theory of the Individual in International Law, Anne Peters & Tom Sparks

1
The Individual in the History of International Law
2. The Individual in International Law in Antiquity, Eleanor Cowan
3. Individuals and Group Identity in Medieval International Law, Dante Fedele & Alain Wijffels
4. From Exemplary Individuals to Private Persons with Rights: International Law 1500-1647, Vitoria, Gentili, and Grotius, Francesca Iurlaro
5. From Re- to Demoralisation: The Individual in International Law, 1648-1789, Mark Somos
6. The Individual in International Law in the Nineteenth Century, 1789-1914, Inge Van Hulle
7. Before Human Rights: The Formation of the International Status of the Individual, 1914-1945, Anne Peters

2
The Individual in the Theory of International Law
8. Legal Positivism and the Individual in International Law, Gleider I. Hernández
9. The Individual in International Law from the Contemporary Sacred Natural Law Perspective, Rafael Domingo
10. The Individual in Secular Natural Law Theories of International Law, Tom Sparks
11. The Status of the Individual in International Law: A TWAIL Perspective, B.S. Chimni
12. The Individual in Feminist Approaches to International Law, Ruth Houghton
13. A Marxist Account of the Individual in International Law, Marina Veličković
14. Global Law and the Individual, Angelo Jr. Golia
15. Global Constitutionalism and the Individual, Başak Çalı
16. The Individual in (International) Law and Economics, Anne van Aaken
17. Individual Personhood in Anthropological Approaches to International Law, Marie-Claire Foblets
18. Conclusion: Reconsidering the Individual in International Law, Anne Peters & Tom Sparks

More info with OUP.

NEW ISSUE: Journal of the History of International Law (Volume 26, Issue 3)

Source: Brill

Articles


British Utilitarianism after Bentham: Nineteenth-Century Foundations of International Law Part II
Author:
Robert Schütze
Pages: 243–284

Unequal Treaty in Practice: A Story about Article 23 of the Treaty of Tientsin
Author:
Shiu Chung Chan
Pages: 285–311

Gender, Human Rights Networks, and the State of Emergency During the Arab Revolt (1936–1939)

Author:
Paola Zichi
Pages: 312–344

Book Review

State Responsibility and Rebels: The History and Legacy of Protecting Investment against Revolution, written by Kathryn Greenman

Author:
Filip Batselé
Pages: 345–349

Visit Brill's website for more info.

BOOK: Isaac NAKHIMOVSKY, "The Holy Alliance: Liberalism and the Politics of Federation" (Princeton University Press, 2024)

Source: PUP

Description:

The Holy Alliance is now most familiar as a label for conspiratorial reaction. In this book, Isaac Nakhimovsky reveals the Enlightenment origins of this post-Napoleonic initiative, explaining why it was embraced at first by many contemporary liberals as the birth of a federal Europe and the dawning of a peaceful and prosperous age of global progress. Examining how the Holy Alliance could figure as both an idea of progress and an emblem of reaction, Nakhimovsky offers a novel vantage point on the history of federative alternatives to the nation state. The result is a clearer understanding of the recurring appeal of such alternatives—and the reasons why the politics of federation has also come to be associated with entrenched resistance to liberalism’s emancipatory aims.

Nakhimovsky connects the history of the Holy Alliance with the better-known transatlantic history of eighteenth-century constitutionalism and nineteenth-century efforts to abolish slavery and war. He also shows how the Holy Alliance was integrated into a variety of liberal narratives of progress. From the League of Nations to the Cold War, historical analogies to the Holy Alliance continued to be drawn throughout the twentieth century, and Nakhimovsky maps how some of the fundamental political problems raised by the Holy Alliance have continued to reappear in new forms under new circumstances. Time will tell whether current assessments of contemporary federal systems seem less implausible to future generations than initial liberal expectations of the Holy Alliance do to us today.

Author:

Isaac Nakhimovsky is associate professor of history and humanities at Yale University. He is the author of The Closed Commercial State: Perpetual Peace and Commercial Society from Rousseau to Fichte (Princeton).

More info with the publisher.

BOOK: Kenneth MACK & Jacob KATZ COGAN & (eds.), "In Between and Across: Legal History Without Boundaries" (OUP, 2024)

Source: OUP

Description:

The boundaries between the history of law and the history of everything else are quite blurry nowadays. Whether one is asking questions about the origins of the carceral state, the relationship between slavery and capitalism, the history of migration flows and empires, the longer story of human rights, the building of the straight state, the role of religion in public life, or many others, there is a shared belief that law and its history matters. In fact, legal historians began to focus on the blurring of boundaries such as those between markets and politics, between identity and state power, as well as between national borders and the flows of people, capital and ideas around the world.

Legal history, broadly conceived, seems to mark much of the most exciting work that is redrawing the boundaries of historical scholarship in many areas of study. In Between and Across: Legal History without Boundaries gathers some of the newest and freshest work by both younger and established scholars who are carrying forward that project and extending it into new areas of historical inquiry. It captures the best of the new and innovative tools and questions that have made law a central plane of inquiry, charts novel directions for the field, and poses broader questions concerning the past, present, and future.

Crossing a wide variety of geographic areas (from British-ruled Australia to colonial India and Malaysia, to the United States), the authors sketch new boundaries for the field to cross - boundaries of time, geography, and method - and claim that legal history provides the language to talk across national borders.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Rewriting the Boundaries of Legal History, Kenneth W. Mack and Jacob Katz Cogan

Part I: The Political Economy of Time

1. Views from Rathole Mountain: A Lawscape Journey through Old Virginia, Matthew Axtell

2. The Rise of Retail Stockholder Litigation and the Creation of the Plaintiff's Bar in American Business Law, 1930-1950, Donna Dennis

3. Private Law, Public Welfare, Marital Ideals, and The Gender Binary . . . or, What I Learned at the Socio-Legal Revolution, Felicia Kornbluh

4. Power of the Purse: How “the Philanthropic North” Has Helped Determine Which Individuals, Groups, and Ideas in the Black Freedom Struggle Will Thrive Nationally, Maribel Morey

5. “Kindred to Treason”: Conspiracy Laws in the United States, Sarah Seo

Part II: Law, Space, and Place in History

6. The Case as Episode: Murder and Migration in Colonial Australia, Catherine L. Evans

7. The Chain and the Rope: Illuminating Constitutional Traditions, Maeve Glass

8. South Asians at the Inns of Court: Empire, Expulsion, and Redemption circa 1900, Mitra Sharafi

Part III: Rethinking Method: Law and Everything Else

9. “Our Experiences Make Us Who We Are”: Lessons from Thomas Ruffin and Dirk Hartog, Jessica K. Lowe

10. Debtor Constitutionalism, Farah Peterson

11. Roosters and Resistance, Christina D. Ponsa-Kraus

12. Law, History, and the Interwar ACLU's Jewish Lawyers, Laura Weinrib

More info with OUP.

BOOK: Paul TUCKER, "Global Discord: Values and Power in a Fractured World Order" (Princeton University Press, 2024)

Source: PUP

Description:

Can the international economic and legal system survive today’s fractured geopolitics? Democracies are facing a drawn-out contest with authoritarian states that is entangling much of public policy with global security issues. In Global Discord, Paul Tucker lays out principles for a sustainable system of international cooperation, showing how democracies can deal with China and other illiberal states without sacrificing their deepest political values. Drawing on three decades as a central banker and regulator, Tucker applies these principles to the international monetary order, including the role of the U.S. dollar, trade and investment regimes, and the financial system.

Combining history, economics, and political and legal philosophy, Tucker offers a new account of international relations. Rejecting intellectual traditions that go back to Hobbes, Kant, and Grotius, and deploying instead ideas from David Hume, Bernard Williams, and modern mechanism-design economists, Tucker describes a new kind of political realism that emphasizes power and interests without sidelining morality. Incentives must be aligned with values if institutions are to endure. The connecting tissue for a system of international cooperation, he writes, should be legitimacy, creating a world of concentric circles in which we cooperate more with those with whom we share the most and whom we fear the least.

More information with the publisher.

BOOK: Mary BRIDGES, "Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers and the Making of a Superpower" (Princeton University Press, 2024)

Source: PUP

Description:

The dominance of US multinational businesses today can seem at first like an inevitable byproduct of the nation’s superpower status. In Dollars and Dominion, Mary Bridges tells a different origin story. She explores the ramshackle beginnings of US financial power overseas, showing that US bankers in the early twentieth century depended on the US government, European know-how, and last-minute improvisation to sustain their work abroad. Bridges focuses on an underappreciated piece of the nation’s financial infrastructure—the overseas branch bank—as a brick-and-mortar foundation for expanding US commercial influence.

Bridges explores how bankers sorted their new communities into “us”—potential clients—and “them”—local populations, who often existed on the periphery of the banking world. She argues that US bankers mapped their new communities by creating foreign credit information—and by using a financial asset newly enabled by the Federal Reserve System, the bankers’ acceptance, in the process. In doing so, they constructed a new architecture of US trade finance that relied on long-standing inequalities and hierarchies of privilege. Thus, racialized, class-based, and gendered ideas became baked into the financial infrastructure.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, there was nothing inevitable or natural about the rise of US finance capitalism. Bridges shows that US foreign banking was a bootstrapped project that began as a side hustle of Gilded Age tycoons and sustained itself by relying on the power of the US state, copying the example of British foreign bankers, and building alliances with local elites. In this way, US bankers constructed a flexible and durable new infrastructure to support the nation’s growing global power.

Mary Bridges, a historian of the twentieth-century United States, is the Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

CALL FOR EXPRESSION OF INTEREST: (De-/re-)constructions of International Law over Time and Space, ESIL Interest Group for the History of International Law (2025 ESIL Annual Conference on “Reconstructing International Law”, Freie Universität Berlin, 10-13 September 2025, DEADLINE: 15 January 2025)

 

Call for Expression of Interest

ESIL Interest Group on the History of International Law

Agora Panel Proposal for the ESIL Annual Conference 2025

  (De-/re-)constructions of International Law over Time and Space

Berlin, 10 to 13 September 2025

Submission deadline: 15 January 2025

The ESIL Interest Group on the History of International Law is preparing an Agora panel proposal on ‘(De-/re-)constructions of International Law over Time and Space’ for the 2025 ESIL Annual Conference “Reconstructing International Law” in Berlin, Germany. The outcome of the Agora proposal is uncertain, but the panel speakers will be invited to present at the interest group pre-conference workshop, if the Agora proposal is not selected by the conference organizers.

Themes

This Agora aims to better understand the theme of ‘reconstructing international law’ from a historical perspective: (1) What have been the causes and reasons for (re-)constructions of international law in its history? (2) How has international law fared after past major systemic crises? (3) What can we learn from institutional and normative projects of (re-)constructing ‘new’ international law in the past?

Until modern times, international relations were determined by the good will of the sovereign and force played the dominant role in these relations. There has been no agreed definition as to when ‘international law’ exactly began, but it is generally agreed that (de-/re-)construction has been a common theme in the history of international law at various moments in time, with the Westphalian Peace of 1648 being marked as one of the most famous watershed moments. The subsequent transition from European public law to international law through colonial expansion was another important moment of territorial ‘reconstruction.’ Conversely, one might inquire about the extent to which decolonization and the admission of newly independent states has led to the ‘reconstruction’ of Eurocentric international law in the 20^th century.

At the same time, reconstruction can be approached from an institutional perspective or through the historical expansion of the actors or sources of international law. One could also explore the (de-/re-) construction of international law through the rise and fall of its individual sub-disciplines or by looking at reconstruction within and across sub-disciplines. Apart from successful (de-/re-) construction, the failed attempts of various actors to (de-/re-)construct international law could provide important lessons about reform. In addition to the restructuring of international law in the history, we are also interested in papers discussing the restructuring of ‘the history of international law’ as a discipline, its theories, and methodologies.

The IG particularly encourages interdisciplinary research engaging with historical methods, such as the use of archives and other historical sources. Perspectives from underrepresented regions and critical scholars are particularly welcomed.

Submission procedure

Members of the HIL IG and other ESIL Members working on related topics are invited to express their interest in participating by sending to lamsh@vuw.leidenuniv.nl prior to the deadline the following documents:

-          An Abstract of no more than 400 words

-          Your curriculum vitae

-          Your short biography, indicating whether you are an ESIL member and whether you are applying for the ESIL Early-Career Scholar Prize

 Timeline

The deadline for expressing interest in the Agora panel proposal is 15 January 2025. We expect to inform successful applicants before 31 January 2025 if they will be part of the Proposal.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact Ocean: lamsh@vuw.leidenuniv.nl.

Please note that the Interest Group is prioritizing those who could present their papers in person. However, the Interest Group is unable to provide funding for travel and accommodation. Selected speakers will be expected to bear the costs of their own travel and accommodation. Some ESIL travel grants and ESIL carers’ grants will be available to offer partial financial support to speakers who have exhausted other potential funding sources.

Please see the ESIL website for all relevant information about the conference.

Conveners

Anastasia Hammerschmied – Florenz Volkaert - Jaanika Erne – Sze Hong Lam (Ocean)

SEMINAR SERIES: "Thinking Gender, History, & International Law" (University of Warwick/Teams, October 2024 - March 2025)

Description:

Our aim is to engage a global audience interested in critical, feminist, and postcolonial perspectives on contemporary and historical issues in international law and politics. The series aims to create a space for academic research and networking, bringing together scholars from various fields to discuss feminist and gender-centred issues in history and international law. Each session will feature a dialogue between two or more scholars to foster discussion and conversation.

Our inaugural session, "How to Write Feminist Histories of International Law?", will take place next Monday, October 21, 2024, at 5pm BST. We're thrilled to have Aoife Donoughe, Maria Drakopolou, Diane Marie Amann, and Gina Heathcote as our distinguished speakers for this session.

Full list of seminar topics:

October 21, 2024: How to Write Feminist Histories of International Law?

November 18, 2024: How to Gender the Public and Private Divide in International Law?

December 2, 2024: Women's Rights and Human Rights: Carceral Genealogies from CEDAW to Istanbul

January 13, 2025: Decolonial Methods: Gender, History and Law Through Black Literature

February 3, 2025: Decolonising Children's Rights and International Criminal Law: Human Rights Between Security and Empowerment

February 25, 2025: Gender and International Criminal Law: History, Victimhood and Transitional Justice

March 17, 2025: International Law and Colour Line: Is Palestine a Feminist Issue?

---

For more information and required pre-registration, visit Warwick University's dedicated webpage.

To subscribe to the mailing list, email paola.zichi@warwick.ac.uk or Aisel.Omarova@warwick.ac.uk. 

SPECIAL ISSUE: Revista Brasileira de História & Ciências Sociais, "História do Direito Internacional" (Volume 16, Issue 32, 2024)

Source: Revista Brasileira de Historia & Ciencias Sociais

Description:

Apresentação do Volume 16 Número 32 da Revista Brasileira de História & Ciências Sociais

Denize Terezinha Leal Freitas, Fabiano Quadros Rückert, José Carlos da Silva Cardozo, Jonathan Fachini da Silva, Tiago da Silva Cesar, Wagner Silveira Feloniuk

4-5

História do Direito Internacional

Augusto Jaeger Junior, Arno Dal Ri Jr., Lucas Carlos Lima

6-10

Dossiê

Percursos do Princípio das Nacionalidades nas doutrinas belgas de Direito Internacional: do Círculo de Gante à Escola de Lovânia (1863-1953)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16513

Arno Dal Ri Jr

11-53

 

A cláusula da nação mais favorecida em tratados comerciais: percepções ocidentais sobre a prática latino-americana de tratados comerciais no final do século XIX e início do século XX

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16576

Florenz Volkaert, Fernando Muniz Shecaira

54-87

 

A participação brasileira na elaboração do Estatuto da CPJI: o papel de Clovis Bevilaqua a Raul Fernandes

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16509

Lucas Carlos Lima

88-107

 

A história da construção do modelo de produção tradicional do direito internacional

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16665

Amina Welten Guerra

108-138

A prática dos estados asiáticos na implementação do princípio de proteção de monumentos e obras de arte antes da Primeira Guerra Mundial

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16429

Alice Lopes Fabris

139-158

A obra literária de Carl Schmitt durante seus anos como protagonista jurídico do nacional-socialismo (1933-1936): uma sobreposição entre os escritos e os fatos

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16602

Marcelo Markus Teixeira

159-181

Decolonizing International Law: between demystifications and resignifications

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16555

Tatiana de A. F. R. Cardoso Squeff, Gabriel Pedro Dassoler Damasceno

182-205

 

O peticionamento das vítimas de violações de direitos humanos no sistema convencional das nações unida

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16529

Cristina Figueiredo Terezo Ribeiro, Thaís Magno

206-245

 

De objetivos universais a resultados locais: apontamentos para uma história da proteção regional aos direitos humanos

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16586

Alexander de Castro

246-269

 

Direitos africanos dos Direitos Humanos – análise desde a perspectiva jurídico-histórica

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16565

João Francisco

270-298

 

A talidomida no banco dos réus: o julgamento de Alsdorf (Alemanha, 1968) a partir da imprensa brasileira

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16582

Francieli Lunelli Santos

299-323

 

A Resiliência da Identidade: Indigenato e a Virada Histórica no Direito Internacional

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16369

Lucas Lixinski

324-354

 

O Supremo Acordo: usos jurídicos do passado da Anistia no julgamento da Arguição de Descumprimento de Preceito Fundamental n. 153

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16715

Ilanil Coelho, Pedro Odainai

355-390

 

Interesses políticos na evolução histórica do Direito Internacional dos Refugiados e no caso ucraniano: entre humanitarismo e seletividade na prática europeia

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16537

Augusto Jaeger Junior, Ricardo Strauch Aveline

391-420

 

Das contribuições de Francisco de Vitória ao necessário giro epistemológico para as Américas: o Direito Internacional redimensionado a partir do Sul Global

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16568

Thiago Giovani Romero, Wanda Helena Mendes Muniz Falcão, Vinicius Villani Abrantes

421-438

 

O solidarismo de Hugo Grócio como princípio normativo de um constitucionalismo transnacional no século XXI

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16724

Anderson Vichinkeski Teixeira

More info with the publisher.

SEMINAR: "France, Europe, empires, XVIe – début XIXe siècle" (École Normale Supérieure de Paris, October 2024 - May 2025)

Source: IDHES

Description:

France, Europe, empires, XVIe – début XIXe siècle

Dates

Du 18 octobre 2024 au 16 mai 2025

Annuel en quinzaine (sauf exception), le vendredi, 16 h – 18 h

Lieu

ENS

bâtiment Jaurès, aile Ulm, 2e étage, Salle Ferdinand Berthier (U207)

29 rue d’Ulm

75005 Paris

RER B : Luxembourg

Attention : entrée du public par le 24, rue Lhomond (et long parcours intérieur fléché)

Organisation

IDHES, UMR 8533 :

Michela Barbot (CNRS), Anne Conchon (Université Paris 1), Laurence Croq (Université Paris Nanterre), Vincent Demont (Université Paris Nanterre), Vincent Milliot (Université Paris 8), Daniel Velinov (CNRS) et Julien Villain (Université Évry Paris-Saclay)

Programme

Vendredi 18 octobre 2024

Séance introductive

Vendredi 8 novembre 2024

Catherine Denys, Université de Lille

Comment naît une police coloniale d’Ancien Régime ? L’exemple de l’île de France (île Maurice) au XVIIIe siècle

Vendredi 22 novembre 2024

Simon Castanie, docteur de l’Université Sorbonne Université

L’emprisonnement pour dette à Paris dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle

Vendredi 6 décembre 2024

Jean-Paul Zuniga, CRH, EHESS

Catégorie fiscale et identification sociale : dire l’appartenance à Santiago du Chili (fin XVIIe – début XVIIIe siècle)

Vendredi 24 janvier 2025

Giorgio Riello, Warwik University, IUE Florence

The Workshop of the World: Factories and Capitalism in Early Modern Global Asia

Vendredi 7 février 2025

Marie Houllemare, Université de Genève

Masculinités esclavagistes : genre et violence dans la Caraïbe française au XVIIIe siècle

Vendredi 21 février 2025

Laurence Croq, Université Paris Nanterre

La police des femmes de lettres à Paris au XVIIIe siècle

Vendredi 14 mars 2025

Guillaume Garner, ENS Lyon

Le caméralisme : une économie politique du capitalisme ? (vers 1740 – vers 1800)

Vendredi 28 mars 2025

Thomas Pasquier, doctorant, Université Paris 8

Par-delà verrous et clôtures. Criminalité, ordre et propriété pendant la Révolution française 

Vendredi 11 avril 2025

Juliette Françoise, doctorante, Université de Genève, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

La régulation de la monnaie : un élément de la formation des empires modernes ? L’exemple de l’Empire français en Asie au XVIIIe siècle

Vendredi 25 avril 2025

Donia Menghini, doctorante, Université Paris 8

Maintenir l’ordre et policer la vallée du Saint-Laurent, de la Nouvelle-France au Canada anglais

Vendredi 16 mai 2025

Domitille de Gavriloff, doctorante, CENA, EHESS

Les missionnaires, éléments perturbateurs ou régulateurs de l’ordre esclavagiste et racial dans les colonies de la Caraïbe française, XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles ?

Dans la première quinzaine de juin aura lieu une journée d’études « carte blanche » organisée par les doctorants.

More info with IDHES.

BOOK: Philip STERN, "Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism" (Harvard University Press, 2023)

Source: HUP

Description:

Across four centuries, from Ireland to India, the Americas to Africa and Australia, British colonialism was above all the business of corporations. Corporations conceived, promoted, financed, and governed overseas expansion, making claims over territory and peoples while ensuring that British and colonial society were invested, quite literally, in their ventures. Colonial companies were also relentlessly controversial, frequently in debt, and prone to failure. The corporation was well-suited to overseas expansion not because it was an inevitable juggernaut but because, like empire itself, it was an elusive contradiction: public and private; person and society; subordinate and autonomous; centralized and diffuse; immortal and precarious; national and cosmopolitan—a legal fiction with very real power.

Breaking from traditional histories in which corporations take a supporting role by doing the dirty work of sovereign states in exchange for commercial monopolies, Philip Stern argues that corporations took the lead in global expansion and administration. Whether in sixteenth-century Ireland and North America or the Falklands in the early 1980s, corporations were key players. And, as Empire, Incorporated makes clear, venture colonialism did not cease with the end of empire. Its legacies continue to raise questions about corporate power that are just as relevant today as they were 400 years ago.

Challenging conventional wisdom about where power is held on a global scale, Stern complicates the supposedly firm distinction between private enterprise and the state, offering a new history of the British Empire, as well as a new history of the corporation.

More info with the publisher.

BOOK: Patrick QUINTON-BROWN, "Intervention before Interventionism: A Global Genealogy" (OUP, 2024)

Source: OUP

Description:

Intervention before Interventionism is about the ways in which statespeople have reordered intervention and non-intervention since the middle of the twentieth century. It is concerned primarily with non-Western contestations of Western-dominated order; it illustrates institutional change in and through decolonization; and it provides a conceptual roadmap for understanding dilemmas of intervention and non-intervention today, particularly in relation to contestation as it has re-emerged in the twenty-first century. While building on and conversing with existing literature, the book stands out from previous approaches insofar as it is a mapping of international struggles for the reconstitution of intervention in the globalization of the society of states.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
1 Reconstituting intervention: Contestation and the Princeton Conference
2 Dictatorial intervention and the UN Charter
3 Anti-colonial intervention and the Bandung Spirit
4 ‘Friendly’ intervention and the Special Committee
5 Emancipatory intervention and the New International Orders
6 Liberal intervention and the Responsibilities to Protect
Epilogue

More info with the publisher.

BOOK: Ryo SAHASHI, Yasuhiro MATSUDA& Waka AOYAMA (eds.), "Asia Rising: A Handbook of History and International Relations in East, South and Southeast Asia" (Springer, 2024)

 

Source: Springer

Description:

This open-access book offers a clear and thorough exploration of Asia's history from an international relations perspective. The book investigates key political, economic, and cultural forces defining Asia. It highlights the historical and current significance of the Indo-Pacific region, particularly shedding light on its strategic role in global geopolitics. Through detailed historical analyses, the authors guide readers toward a comprehensive understanding of Asia's complex international relations, from colonization and imperialism, through the Cold War, into decolonization and the wave of democratization in the region, to the rise of China, unpacking the various dimensions of regionalism in Asia. This book serves as a practical scholarly resource for advanced students, researchers, and lecturers interested in understanding the region's past and its implications for future geopolitical dynamics. It is relevant to historians focused on Asia and to international relations and political science scholars interested in the shift to an Asian world order, from past to present.

More info with Springer.

COLLOQUIUM: "Génocide. Droit et histoire du crime des crimes", Collège de France (Paris, 13 June 2025)

Source: Collège de France

Description:

Colloque coorganisé par la Pr Samantha Besson, chaire Droit international des institutions et le Pr Henry Laurens, chaire Histoire contemporaine du monde arabe.

Garantie pour la première fois en droit international en 1948 (Convention pour la prévention et la répression du crime de génocide du 9 décembre 1948), l’interdiction du génocide est souvent considérée comme l’interdiction du « crime des crimes ». Contrairement aux autre crimes codifiés à nouveau depuis dans les statuts de tribunaux pénaux internationaux (dont le Statut de Rome de la Cour pénale internationale (CPI) du 17 juillet 1998), le crime de génocide n’a jamais varié dans sa formulation. En comparaison, il a aussi été peu invoqué et, dès lors, peu interprété dans la jurisprudence, que ce soit par les tribunaux pénaux nationaux ou les tribunaux pénaux internationaux ad hoc ou permanents comme la CPI. Certains en ont déduit une force normative parmi les plus élevées en droit international, une valeur de reconnaissance historique des crimes commis et, c’est lié, un rôle avant tout préventif. Depuis une quinzaine d’années, toutefois, une évolution se fait sentir. La violation de l’obligation qu’ont les États de prévenir le génocide est invoquée de manière de plus en plus fréquente en pratique. C’est ainsi que, dès 2007, la jurisprudence de la Cour internationale de justice (CIJ) s’est étoffée autour de l’obligation de prévention du génocide. Actuellement la clause de compétence de l’art. IX de la Convention de 1948 est au fondement de pas moins de quatre procédures contentieuses contre des États devant la CIJ.

Face à cette évolution rapide de la pratique internationale, un bilan juridique s’impose. Étant donné la place centrale donnée à divers titres à l’histoire au sein du raisonnement juridique en matière de génocide, il est intéressant d’y procéder en dialogue avec les historiens. La Convention de 1948 y invite d’ailleurs les juristes, reconnaissant dans son préambule « qu’à toutes les périodes de l’histoire le génocide a infligé de grandes pertes à l’humanité ». L’intérêt d’un tel bilan vaut aussi en histoire. La question se pose en effet de l’application du concept (juridique) de génocide aux réalités mouvantes de l’histoire, en particulier à un moment où de larges pans du passé sont vécus comme appartenant toujours à notre présent. Il ne s’agit pas de nier l’existence d’exterminations de masses, mais de déterminer si le concept de génocide apporte un élément supplémentaire de compréhension aux processus étudiés.

Durant cette journée de rencontre, juristes et historiens, spécialistes du génocide, noueront un dialogue, nous l’espérons, fructueux. Leurs débats seront articulés autour de quatre questions : 1) Interdiction du génocide : des violences et « légendes noires » au crime de droit coutumier ; 2) Auteurs de génocide : individuels, collectifs et/ou institutionnels ; 3) Conditions du génocide : intentions et/ou processus génocidaires ; et 4) Justice et vérité du génocide : « passé qui ne passe pas » et « assassins de la mémoire ». Le traitement de ces questions sera bien entendu l’occasion de revenir sur différents cas de génocide dans l’histoire, y compris dans l’histoire du droit international.

Intervenantes et intervenants : Monique Chemillier-Gendreau (université Paris Cité) ; Christian Ingrao (CESPRA, École des hautes études en sciences sociales/CNRS) ; Mark Levene (université de Southampton) ; Rafaëlle Maison (IEDP, université Paris-Saclay) ; Jean-Clément Martin (IHMC, université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) ; Guénaël Mettraux (Chambres spécialisées pour le Kosovo, La Haye & Dickinson Law School, université d’État de Pennsylvanie) ; Henry Rousso (IHTP, CNRS) ; William Schabas (université de Middlesex, Londres).

More info with CdF.

LECTURE SERIES: "Histoires et mémoires des Africains Européens de l’Antiquité à nos jours", Cycle Europe du Collège de France (Paris, November 2024)

Source: Collège de France

Description:

Ce cycle de quatre conférences aura pour but d’explorer les histoires et les expériences des personnes d’ascendance africaine afin de comprendre de quelle manière leurs trajectoires sont intimement liées à l’histoire de l’Europe. On s’attellera à examiner les changements liés aux perceptions et aux représentations des personnes d’ascendance africaine au fil des siècles. Un regard critique sera ensuite porté sur la manière dont leurs histoires ont été concentrées sur la période coloniale (XVe-XIXe siècle) et la manière dont le préjugé de couleur est devenu central dans la notion de race. Ces communautés, souvent perçues comme victimes, ont réussi à émerger des traumas au travers de diverses pratiques mémorielles qui seront examinées. La question des héritages du passé pour le présent sera également abordée, notamment autour des enjeux mémoriels, des réparations et du corps comme lieu de lutte politique mais aussi comme outil de guérison du trauma.

For the full program, click here.

BOOK: Lyndsay CAMPBELL & Shaunnagh DORSETT, "Legal Histories of Empire: Navigating Legalities" (Taylor & Francis, 2024)

Source: Taylor & Francis

Description:

This collection brings together an international group of scholars in order to provide new insights into the diversity of imperial legalities.

Across empires, legalities were produced not just – or even – through the imperial imposition of laws and legal forms, but through local processes of negotiation and contestation. Far from the metropoles, local actors found ways to creatively navigate and subvert imperial frameworks and laws and to create space in which to shape new legalities, responsive to local circumstance and need. Covering topics as diverse as smuggling in eighteenth century Jersey, the criminalisation of female market women in World War II-era southern Nigeria, and whiteness and race in ‘sexual perversion’ cases in twentieth-century Malaya, the collection elaborates new legal histories of empire. Drawing from Britain, Ireland, Australia, Canada, the USA, India, Sri Lanka, Africa and Malaysia, the collection brings together chapters that examine the stories of the peoples of empires and shows how they constituted, experienced, navigated and subverted the legal complexities of living under empire.

This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers in law and history, but also to those with relevant interests in post-colonial and cultural studies, as well as in criminology and sociology.

More info and table of contents with the publisher.

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Colonial Legacies in Public Law: histories, theories, pitfalls and potentials (Queen Mary Centre for Law and Society in a Global Context, 14-16 January 2025, DEADLINE: 20 September 2024)

Colonial Legacies in Public Law: histories, theories, pitfalls and potentials - call for applications

When: Tuesday, January 14, 2025 - Thursday, January 16, 2025, 12:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Where: TBC

The Queen Mary Centre of Law and Society in a Global Context (CLSGC) is thrilled to announce a Masterclass with Professor Philipp Dann that will take place on 14-16 January 2025.

Organisers: Mohsin Bhat, Tanzil Chowdhury and Eva Nanopoulos.

The legacies of empire and colonialism are becoming visible everywhere these days. They shape various debates in public law but also indicate a new phase of globalization. The Masterclass will study these legacies and discuss their various dimensions and implications in comparative constitutional, public international and European Union law. The Class will draw on history and political theory, especially post-/decolonial theories to contextualize public law. It will use examples (such as the concept of development and democracy) to understand how empire and colonialism have shaped constitutional, international and European Union law and their scholarly reflection over time. But it will also turn to the future and ask participants to explore the potentials (and pitfalls) for re-imagining public law and its scholarship in the 21st century through the colonial lens. The Class is an invitation to rethink public law and the role of legal scholarship in a truly global way mindful of the broader legacies of modernity and colonialism.

Please note the start and end times listed are provisional and will be confirmed at a later date.

Overview of the sessions

Session 1: Comparative Constitutional Law, the Southern Turn and Reflexive Globalization – argument and framing

On the first day, the general theme of the class will be introduced and a framework of analysis established. This includes a basic engagement with colonial history and postcolonial thought as well as a reflection on the attention of public law scholarship to these dimensions so far. The class will discuss the overarching argument that a ‘Southern Turn’ and an understanding of colonial legacies provides a foundation to rethink the conceptual vocabulary of public law in the 21st century. Comparative constitutional law is a paramount area for such reflexive rethinking of public law theory.

Session 2: International law and the concept of development

The second day will turn to international law, the scholarship of which was the first to engage with colonial legacies. The class will situate and discuss Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL). It will then engage in particular with the concept of development as the central paradigm to structure South-North relations in the 20th century and study its implications for international institutional, economic and human rights law in shaping international law up until today.

Session 3: Constitutional thought in reflexive globalization: examples of temporality and democracy

On day Three, the class will return to the initial argument that basic notions and the conceptual vocabulary of public law are in (and need) a process of reflexive rethinking in order to grasp and structure the realities of public authority in the multipolar world of the 21st century. The class will turn to two examples that will demonstrate this process and possible outcomes of such reflexive rethinking. One is the perspective of time and temporality that allows us to highlight distinct elements of public law; the other example is democracy, a universally used notion, which still rests on conceptual considerations arising from 19th and early 20th century Europe even though it has traveled long ago.

Session 4: European Public Law and the legacies of Empires

Scholarship on the law of the European Union as well as the law of European states has been late in engaging with postcolonial perspectives. Day Four of the class will engage with reasons for this obliviousness – and then examine various colonial legacies in these two and entangled bodies of public law. Through the colonial lens, concept such as the state (and community of states), citizenship and the common market take on new contours and become more contested and less solid as generally assumed.

About Professor Philipp Dann

Philipp Dann is Professor at Humboldt University Berlin, where he holds the Chair in Public and Comparative Law. His research focuses on the role of law in the encounter and entanglement between South and North – in international, comparative and European law, in legal theory and legal history. He has published three monographs, ten edited volumes and is the editor-in-chief of the quarterly journal “World Comparative Law”. He is a co-founder of the ‘Law and Development Research Network’, a co-chair of the ICON chapter Germany and a principal investigator at research clusters ‘Contestations of the Liberal Script’ and ‘Varieties of Constitutionalism’. He has advised governments and other parties on constitutional matters and questions of law and development.

Format

The Class will be text- and discussion-oriented, based on a reader comprising texts by Professor Dann and other eminent works in the field. It will unfold through four sessions of 3 hours each.

Each session will be composed of three elements: An introductory lecture by Professor Dann on the theme; discussions among smaller groups on the lecture and the assigned readings guided by an open set of questions; and a plenary discussion on the theme with Professor Dann.

Application process

The Class is addressed to academic researchers (including PhD and postdoctoral students) with research interests broadly aligned within the themes of the Class.

Applications should be sent to Eva Nanopoulos: e.nanopoulos@qmul.ac.uk by the 20 September, with the folllowing information:Name

Current institution

Country of origin

Gender

Statement of interest (500 words)

CV upload (up to 3 or 4 pages)

Source: Queen Mary University London

BOOK: Christopher MEISSNER, "One From the Many: The Global Economy Since 1850" (OUP, 2024)

Source: OUP

Description:

Amid a recent surge in arguments that the global economy has begun to "de-globalize," a question has emerged: will globalization survive? In One from the Many: The Global Economy since 1850, Christopher M. Meissner argues that based on the long-run of history, globalization will not be easily vanquished.

This brief introduction to the economic history of the global economy and the process of globalization since 1850 tracks and explains changes in international trade, migration, and capital flows over time. All key indicators of globalization rose between 1850 and 1914 during the first wave of globalization. Between 1918 and 1939 the global economy stagnated, suffering a momentous collapse during the Great Depression of the 1930s. After World War II, the global economy re-emerged and integration deepened.

A long-run view suggests that rising integration and growth of global economy can generate economic benefits and raise welfare. Given these lessons, the global economy will almost surely survive and integration will continue to grow. However, globalization can only survive if humanity continues to recognize its common interests and the untapped potential of further integration. At the same time, the potential adverse effects of greater integration must be acknowledged, mitigated, and minimized. Meissner's brief history of the global economy offers economics, political science, and history students a new perspective on the history of its subject matter, with an eye on a future where globalization has the potential to persist as an integrative force.

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 The Very Long Run: 10,000 BCE - 1820 CE

Chapter 3 The Great Specialization: 1820 -1914

Chapter 4 International Investment, 1820 -1914

Chapter 5 Inter-dependence and Instability in the Classical Gold Standard Era

Chapter 6 The Great Migrations

Chapter 7 The Beginning of the End: Backlash to the First Wave of Globalization

Chapter 8 World War I and its Legacy (Prologue to the Great Depression): 1914-1928

Chapter 9 The Great Depression: An Unprecedented International Economic Crisis

Chapter 10 Rebuilding the World Economy (yet, again)

Chapter 11 The Global Economy in the Post-War Era

Chapter 12 The Bretton Woods System - A New Regime

Chapter 13 International Financial Flows and Financial Crises after the End of the Bretton Woods System

Chapter 14 The International Economy since 2000: Hyperglobalization and Beyond

Chapter 15 Prospects for the Global Economy in the 21st Century

References

Christopher M. Meissner is professor of economics at the University of California, Davis and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

More info with OUP.

JOURNAL: Journal of the History of International Law/Revue d'histoire du droit international XXVI (Volume 26/2, 2024)

 

(image source: Brill)

Description: 

A New History for Human Rights: Conflict of Laws as Adjacent Possibility (León Castellanos-Jankiewicz) [OPEN ACCESS]

DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10095
Abstract:

The pivotal contributions of private international law to the conceptual emergence of international human rights law have been largely ignored. Using the idea of adjacent possibility as a theoretical metaphor, this article shows that conflict of laws analysis and technique enabled the articulation of human rights universalism. The nineteenth-century epistemic practice of private international law was a key arena where the claims of individuals were incrementally cast as being spatially independent from their state of nationality before rights universalism became mainstream. Conflict of laws was thus a vital combinatorial ingredient contributing to the dislocation of rights from territory that underwrites international human rights today. 

International Lawyers as Hope Mongers: How Did We Come to Believe That Democracy Was Here to Stay? (Işıl Aral)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10098
Abstract:

It is common these days to lament the recession of democracy around the world. The way scholars address the issue of democratic backsliding shows that there is a significant gap between the expectation about democracy’s anticipated course of development and the current state of affairs. This article argues that the expectation that democracy would consolidate over time was produced by the progress narrative of democratic governance discourses. Drawing on narratology, it conducts a discourse analysis to demonstrate that today’s dismay about the recession of democracy is due to an unwarranted expectation that was created by the progress narrative of democratic governance discourses. It focuses on the periodisation of history in the construction of these discourses and investigates how scholars used the Cold War – post-Cold War dichotomy to create a progress narrative.

The Twilight of the Law of the Fairs: Inventing International Cooperation on Bankruptcies in Early Modern Europe (Lyon, 1660–1710) (Benoît Saint-Cast)
DOI  10.1163/15718050-bja10094
Abstract:

Bankruptcy was a key institution in the development of markets in Europe. However, the territoriality of jurisdictions and legal systems made international insolvencies difficult to manage. In the middle of the seventeenth century, cities such as Lyon developed networks of cooperation by granting foreign merchants equal rights to local creditors on a reciprocal basis. However, courts were reluctant to give foreign authorities control over assets and creditors on their territory. The article examines how the Lyon commercial court changed its policy towards international insolvencies during the second half of the seventeenth century. Whereas equal treatment of foreign creditors was conditioned on the recognition of an extraterritorial jurisdiction in the medieval fairs system, it now depended on the reciprocity of the legal status granted to merchants abroad. This system of cooperation between equally sovereign courts prefigured in many ways the current situation of private international law in bankruptcy matters.

Book review

The Political Economy of International Commodity Cartels: An Economic History of the European Timber Trade in the 1930s , written by Elina Kuorelahti (Florenz Volkaert) 
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10108

Check out the full issue on Brill's website here.

BOOK: Anthony LANG & Antjie WIENER (eds.), "Handbook on Global Constitutionalism" (2nd edition, Edward Elgar, 2024)

Source: Elgar

 Description:

This thoroughly revised Handbook presents an up-to-date political and philosophical history of global constitutionalism. By exploring the constitutional-like qualities of international affairs, it provides key insights into the evolving world order.

Through a sustained examination of current events, as well as an acknowledgement of the significance of early constitutional history, this erudite Handbook brings together contributions from world-leading academics. New chapters offer timely commentaries on important developments in methodology such as postcolonial and feminist approaches. By providing additional scope for analysis, this updated edition further emphasises the central message of the first: that the global order cannot be understood without a clear comprehension of constitutional theory.

The Handbook on Global Constitutionalism will act as an essential resource for scholars and academics of law, politics and human rights. Due to its comprehensive examination of vital concepts such as legal theory, it will additionally be beneficial for practitioners and policy makers.

Table of contents:

Preface and acknowledgments xvii

1 Introduction to the Handbook on Global Constitutionalism: protecting

rights and democracy while binding power 1

Anthony F. Lang, Jr. and Antje Wiener

PART I HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS

2 Global constitutionalism: the ancient worlds 24

Jill Harries

3 Medieval constitutionalism 36

Francis Oakley

4 Global constitutionalism in the early modern period: the role of

empires, treaties and natural law 47

Martine van Ittersum

5 The Enlightenment and global constitutionalism 60

Chris Thornhill

6 Modern historical antecedents of global constitutionalism in theoretical

perspective 77

Michel Rosenfeld

PART II POLITICAL AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORIES

7 Cosmopolitanism and global constitutionalism 90

Garrett Wallace Brown

8 Liberal theory 102

Iain Ferguson

9 Constructivism and global constitutionalism 116

Jan Wilkens

10 Realist perspectives on global constitutionalism 130

Oliver Jütersonke

11 Critical theory 141

Gavin W. Anderson

12 The English School and global constitutionalism 153

Filippo Costa Buranelli

13 Postcolonial global constitutionalism 167

Sigrid Boysen

14 Feminist approaches to global constitutionalism 186

Ruth Houghton

PART III LEGAL THEORIES

15 Natural law at the foundation of global constitutionalism 209

Mary Ellen O’Connell

16 International legal constitutionalism, legal forms and the need for villains 226

Jean d’Aspremont

17 Interactional legal theory, the international rule of law and global

constitutionalism 241

Jutta Brunnée and Stephen J. Toope

18 The shifting relationship between functionalism and global constitutionalism 254

Jeffrey L. Dunoff

19 Global constitutionalism and international public authority in the crisis

of liberal internationalism 266

Armin von Bogdandy, Matthias Goldmann and Ingo Venzke

PART IV PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES

20 Global constitutionalism and the rule of law 295

Mattias Kumm

21 Balance of powers 309

Eoin Carolan

22 Constituent power in global constitutionalism 319

Peter Niesen

23 Human rights as transnational constitutional law 332

Samantha Besson

24 Proportionality as a global constitutional principle 347

Anne Peters

25 Written versus unwritten: two views on the form of an international

constitution 364

Bardo Fassbender

26 Transnational litigation networks: agents of change in the global

constitutional order 374

Jill Bähring

27 Human rights, sovereignty and the use of force 396

Sassan Gholiagha

PART V INSTITUTIONS AND FRAMEWORKS

28 International judicial review 410

Başak ‚alõ

29 Legislatures 424

M.J. Peterson

30 Executive and exception 437

William E. Scheuerman

31 Federalism: from constitutionalism to constitutionalization? 448

Thomas O. Hueglin

32 The UN Charter and global constitutionalism? 460

Michael W. Doyle

33 Functionalism, constitutionalism and the United Nations 477

Jan Klabbers

34 The European Union and global constitutionalism 490

Jo Shaw

35 The International Criminal Court and global constitutionalism 508

Andrea Birdsall and Anthony F. Lang, Jr.

36 Global commercial constitutionalization: the World Trade Organization 519

Joel P. Trachtman

PART VI NEW HORIZONS

37 Global constitutionalism and outer space governance 529

Adam Bower

38 The political economy of global constitutionalism 542

Christine Schwöbel-Patel

39 Global religion in a post-Westphalia world 556

Susanna Mancini

40 Constitutionalism and pluralism 568

Neil Walker

More info on EE.