Moritz MIHATSCH & Michael MULLIGAN, "Shifting Sovereignties A Global History of a Concept in Practice" (De Gruyter, 2025)

Source: De Gruyter

Description:

Shifting Sovereignties explores practical manifestations of sovereignty from antiquity to the Anthropocene. Taking a global-history perspective and centring Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, it destabilises overly neat theoretical notions of the concept. Shifting Sovereignties shows that, in practice, sovereignty is far from absolute, perpetual, indivisible, or supreme; rather it is fuzzy, compromised, fragmented, and layered. From these observations, the authors derive a historical conceptualisation which makes change and contingency core aspects of the understanding of sovereignty. Rather than understanding sovereignty as a characteristic of individual states, Mihatsch and Mulligan propose the notion of “sovereignty regimes”: frameworks of legitimation enforced through mutual recognition. These regimes are created and managed by more or less institutionalised structures which embody what the authors call “system sovereignty.” Sovereignty regimes and system sovereignty are, like sovereignty itself, continuously changing and contingent. This process of change forms the core of the book. Shifting Sovereignties thus contributes a practical, historical perspective on a concept which is foundational in political science, international relations, and international law.

Author / Editor information


Moritz A. Mihatsch, University of Cambridge, UK; Michael R. Mulligan, Euro University of Bahrain.


I An Impractical Concept

Part 1: Many Beginnings

Introduction

II Sovereignty before Sovereignty

III The Inventors of Sovereignty

IV The Ascendance of Sovereignty

Part 2: Illusions of Coherence

Introduction

V Imperial Entanglements

VI The Fog of War

VII The Dawn of Decolonisation

Part 3: A Man in the Desert

Introduction

VIII Sovereignty on Ice

IX The (Dead) End of Sovereignty

X The Mummy Returns

XI Quo Vadis, Sovereignty?

Bibliography

Index

Alisson POWERS, "Arbitrating Empire: United States Expansion and the Transformation of International Law" (Oxford Legal History, 2024, OUP)

Source: OUP

Description:

• Traces how ordinary people used international law to hold the United States accountable for state violence during the first decades of the twentieth century
• Shows how key transformations in the legal architecture of the early twentieth-century United States Empire were the product of efforts to insulate the US government from international scrutiny
• Rethinks histories of the Monroe and Calvo Doctrines in the Americas
• Offers a new way of understanding formations of modern international law through attention to erasure in legal archives

Arbitrating Empire offers a new history of the emergence of the United States as a global power-one shaped as much by attempts to insulate the US government from international legal scrutiny as it was by efforts to project influence across the globe. Drawing on extensive archival research in the United States, Mexico, Panama, and the United Kingdom, the book traces how thousands of dispossessed residents of US-annexed territories petitioned international Claims Commissions between the 1870s and the 1930s to charge the United States with violating international legal protections for life and property.

Through attention to the consequences of their unexpected claims, Allison Powers demonstrates how colonized subjects, refugees from slavery, and migrant workers transformed a series of tribunals designed to establish the legality of US imperial interventions into sites through which to challenge the legitimacy of US colonial governance. One of the first social histories of international law, the book argues that contests over meanings of sovereignty and state responsibility that would reshape the mid-twentieth-century international order were waged not only at diplomatic conferences, but also in Arizona copper mines, Texas cotton fields, Samoan port cities, Cuban sugar plantations, and the locks and stops of the Panama Canal.

Arbitrating Empire uncovers how ordinary people used international law to hold the United States accountable for state-sanctioned violence during the decades when the nation was first becoming a global empire-and demonstrates why State Department attempts to erase their claims transformed international law in ways that continue to shield the US government from liability to this day.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: The Subjects of International Law

Part I: Dispossessions
Chapter 1: Arbitrating Debt
Chapter 2: Arbitrating War
Chapter 3: Arbitrating Citizenship
Part II: Exposures
Chapter 4: The World's Easement
Chapter 5: Dangerous Precedents
Part III: Foreclosures
Chapter 6: Sovereign Inequalities
Chapter 7: The Specter of Compensation

Conclusion: Life and Property

More info with OUP.

BOOK: Alberto RINALDI, "Ghosts of International Law: The Figure of the Foreign Fighter in a Cultural Perspective" (Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law, CUP, 2024)

Source: CUP

Description:

Heroes and villains, idealists and mercenaries, freedom fighters and religious fanatics. Foreign fighters tend to defy easy classification. Good and bad images of the foreign combatant epitomize different conceptions of freedom and are used to characterize the rightness or wrongness of this actor in civil wars. The book traces the history of these figures and their afterlife. It does so through an interdisciplinary methodology employing law, history, and psychoanalytical theory, showing how different images of the foreign combatant are utilized to proscribe or endorse foreign fighters in different historical moments. By linking the Spanish, Angolan, and Syrian civil wars, the book demonstrates how these figures function as a precedent for later periods and how their heritage keeps haunting the imaginary of legal actors in the present.

• Provides an interdisciplinary account of international law-making, with specific reference to violent non-state actors
• Introduces the theory step-by-step using ordinary-language explanations and examples throughout
• Portrays a different story of foreign volunteering and offers a window on the constitutive role of cultural archetypes in international law

Table of Contents:

Introduction

1. The Spanish Civil war and the legacy of Nineteenth Century adventurers

2. The return of the mercenaries: The 1976 Luanda trial in context

3. Enemies of humanity or freedom fighters? The Jihadist combatant in the Syrian Civil war

Back to the Future

Bibliography

Index.

Author

Alberto Rinaldi, Lunds Universitet, Sweden

Alberto Rinaldi has worked for academic and non-academic institutions in Egypt, France, and currently Sweden. His research focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to law and the humanities, including law and emotions, literature, cinema, and pop culture.

More info with CUP.

BOOK: Alan Tzvika NISSEL, "Merchants of Legalism: A History of State Responsibility (1870–1960)" (Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law, CUP, 2024)

Source: CUP

Description:

Since the United Nations finalised its Draft Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts in 2001, most of the attention has been on the codification history of the topic. Alan Nissel widens the historic lens to include the pre-United Nations origins, offering the first extensive study on the American contribution to the modern law of state responsibility. The book examines the recurring narrative of lawyers using international law to suit the particular needs of their clients in three key contexts: the US turn to international arbitration practice in the New World, the German theorisation of public law in the setting of its national unification, and the multilateral effort to codify international law within world bodies. This expanded historical framework not only traces the pre-institutional origins of the code, but also highlights the duality of State responsibility doctrines and the political environments from which they emerged.

• Presents an intense study on the history of state responsibility
• Demonstrates the lasting influence of the United States and Latin America on the contemporary international law of investment protection
• Presents a novel argument on the Monroe Doctrine and its impact on international litigation

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgements

1. The responsibilities of States in International law: an overview

2. The US turn to the technique of international arbitration

3. The creation of State responsibility in the New World

4. International responsibility as German philosophy

5. State responsibility as World order

Epilogue: from State responsibility to the responsibility of States

Bibliography

Index.

Author:

Alan Tzvika Nissel is an Assistant Professor at the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law where he teaches international and property law-related courses. He is also CEO of Wilshire Skyline, a Los Angeles-based asset management company. Dr. Nissel received his LL.D. in international law from Helsinki University under the supervision of Martti Koskenniemi.

More info with CUP.

BOOK: Mark SOMOS et al, "The Unseen History of International Law: A Census Bibliography of Hugo Grotius' De Jure Belli Ac Pacis (1625-1650 Editions), (The History and Theory of International Law, OUP, 2025)

Source: OUP

Description:

• The first global census bibliography of Hugo Grotius' De iure belli ac pacis
• Describes nearly one thousand surviving copies of the first nine editions of De iure belli ac pacis published between 1625 and 1650
• Examines annotations left by four centuries of readers
• Draws from previously unknown primary evidence to revise and expand our understanding of international law

The Unseen History of International Law locates and describes almost one thousand surviving copies of the first nine editions of Hugo Grotius' De iure belli ac pacis (IBP) published between 1625 and 1650. Meticulously reconstructing the publishing history of these first nine editions and cataloguing copies across hundreds of collections, The Unseen History provides fundamental data for reconstructing the impact of IBP across time and space. It also examines annotations that thousands of owners and readers have left in IBP copies over four centuries, offering original insights into the development of international law.

Grotius' De iure belli ac pacis has been commonly regarded as the foundation of modern international law since its first appearance in 1625. Most major international law scholars have engaged with IBP, often owning and richly annotating their own copies. At key moments - including the demise of the Holy Roman Empire, the fall of Napoleon, and the end of both world wars - IBP was reissued with new commentaries by multinational projects devoted to restarting the international order. Despite the enormous literature on IBP's reception and influence, we cannot fully understand its impact without uncovering the history of IBP as a physical object, with hundreds of thousands of unpublished annotations arguing or agreeing with the text, updating and adapting its contents.

Approaching Grotius' seminal work as a physical vehicle of the author's, the publishers', owners', and readers' engagement, The Unseen History radically expands and revises our understanding not only of IBP, but also of the academic discipline and lived practice of modern international law over the last four centuries. In addition to delving into the first nine editions' printing history, descriptive bibliography, and both Grotius' and the publishers' marketing and donation strategies, the book explores Grotius' subsequent impact on pro-slavery and abolitionist litigation as a case study of how the census' original findings can be applied to specific areas of reception.

Table of Contents:


1:General Introduction
PART ONE: WRITING AND PRINTING IBP
2:1625. States and New Findings
3:1626. Pirated but Improved
4:1631. Large-Format and Long-Prepared
5:1632. The Janssonius Piracy
6:1632. The Blaeu Reprisal
7:1642. Annotata: Philemon and Posterity
8:1646. The First Posthumous Edition
9:1647. Re-issuing the 1631 Edition
10:1650. After Westphalia
PART TWO: OWNERS AND READERS OF THE IBP
11:Ownership Patterns of the 1625 IBP
12:Ownership Patterns of the 1626 IBP
13:Ownership Patterns of the 1631 IBP
14:Ownership Patterns of the 1632 Janssonius IBP
15:Ownership Patterns of the 1632 Blaeu IBP
16:Ownership Patterns of the 1642 IBP
17:Ownership Patterns of the 1646 IBP
18:Ownership Patterns of the 1647 IBP
19:Ownership Patterns of the 1650 IBP
20:Patterns in the 1625-1650 Editions
21:IBP and Censorship
22:Testing the Census: The Case of Slavery
23:Conclusion
PART THREE: THE CATALOGUE
24:The 1625 IBP Copies
25:The 1626 IBP Copies
26:The 1631 IBP Copies
27:The 1632 Janssonius IBP Copies
28:The 1632 Blaeu IBP Copies
29:The IBP 1642 IBP Copies
30:The 1646 IBP Copies
31:The 1647 IBP Copies
32:The 1650 IBP Copies
Appendix 1: Printer's Corrections in the 1631 IBP
Appendix 2: List of Co-Bound Copies by Edition
Bibliography

Authors:

Mark Somos is Heisenberg Professor at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, serving as Principal Investigator of the Grotius Census Project. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Harvard and a PhD in Law from Leiden. As a scholar, Mark taught at Sussex, Harvard, Yale, and Tufts universities. He has published six books and eighty articles and co-edits Grotiana and the book series History of European Political and Constitutional Thought. As a lawyer, Mark advises States, individuals, and NGOs, has served as Counsel in several ICJ cases, and has successfully represented victims in front of multiple UN Special Procedures.

Matthew Cleary is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law where he studies legal history, having received his PhD in Law at Edinburgh Law School in 2023 on late medieval testamentary succession law. Prior to this, he studied in Canada, receiving a BA Specialization Honours in History from Laurentian University, and an MA in History from the University of Western Ontario. He has authored (or co-authored) multiple articles and book chapters, which have appeared in Forum Historiae Iuris, Grotiana, and Routledge, with several forthcoming publications.

Pablo Dufour is a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law. He is currently pursuing an MSc in International Relations at the London School of Economics. He holds a BA from the University of Heidelberg, having spent the final year of his undergraduate studies at Sciences Po Paris.

Edward Jones Corredera is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, and is Assistant Lecturer at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia. He received his PhD in History from the University of Cambridge in 2019. His articles have appeared in the English Historical Review, the Journal of Early Modern History, and Global Intellectual History. He has been a Fellow at the Huntington Library and the Residencia de Estudiantes, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Emanuele Salerno is Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Pisa and his current research is centred on theoretical and practical tools for supporting international peace and security in a historical comparative framework. Before joining the MPIL, he has contributed to the Italian research units of the international projects Natural Law 1625-1850 and Serica. He has published on the legal-political culture of the ruling class and cases of pragmatization of the law of nature and nations in eighteenth-century Tuscany.