Politics & International Relations
International Law
International law refers to a set of rules and principles that govern the relations between states and other international actors. It encompasses treaties, customary practices, and legal principles that guide interactions in areas such as diplomacy, trade, and human rights. International law is designed to promote peaceful coexistence, resolve disputes, and uphold global order.
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10 Key excerpts on "International Law"
eBook - PDF- David Feldman(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Hart Publishing(Publisher)
14 International Law and Great Power Politics MATTHEW PARISH W HAT IS International Law? My thesis is that it is incapable of being law in the conventional sense, because it is not enforced by an independent third party. From this it follows that international courts cannot adjudicate inter-national legal disputes free from political considerations. Hence the qualities we associate with the rule of law are necessarily absent from International Law, and the determination of international legal disputes owes more to the politics of international relations than the impartial application of legal principle. That is why we find international courts commonly delivering such unusual results which are often inconsistent with legal principle. The dynamics of Great Power politics means that despite the growth of International Law in recent years, this essential frailty in the discipline is unlikely to change. Law is a system of social rules that govern how people are obliged to interact with one-another. But that alone is not a sufficient definition of the law. Social rules may exist outside the context of law. Social rules may be mere norms (for example do not commit adultery; do not lie), which do not become crimes or legal wrongs save in specified circum-stances. They may be rules of voluntary association: a club may require its members to behave in certain ways. Unlike law, those rules are not compulsory. One may walk away from those rules by departing the club. In principle one may also walk away from the law, by departing the country whose laws govern one’s behaviour. This is possible at least to a degree, consistent with states’ undertakings to extradite one another’s suspects.
eBook - PDF- Ole Jacob Sending, Vincent Pouliot, Iver B. Neumann(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
International Law and the politics of diplomacy 47 Lindseth arrives at a similar point in relation to the development of law in the EU: The very nature of public law has itself deeply evolved. It has become less a system of rules marking seemingly clear lines between “valid” and “invalid” exercises of authority, as classical understandings of . . . the rule of law have demanded. Instead, public law has evolved toward something more focused on “the allocation of burdens of reason-giving,” or, as European scholars are increasingly calling it, “accountability.” 56 Diplomacy and contestation This view presents diplomacy as inherently relational, but it suggests that the relation is between the state and the international environment of legal resources rather than between one state and another. Actors draw on these resources to conduct diplomacy and in doing so they remake them. Their presentations of lawfulness do not need to be accepted by their audience to be legally and politically powerful; dis- agreements over what it means to comply with a given International Law are endemic to the international legal field, and it is a rare exception when an international dispute is resolved by determining the true meaning of compliance. The key relation in diplomacy is not between the speaker and the audience but rather between the actor and the structure of international legal resources. The fact that the audience for diplomacy need not agree with the claims being made by the state suggests that the most important pro- duct of diplomacy is not persuasion or consensus or agreement or socialization or learning or acculturation. 57 Each of these may indeed be important in international politics in various and interesting ways, but they are generally presented as means for overcoming disagree- ment, as embodying a means for reducing or eliminating divergent views.
- David Armstrong, Theo Farrell, Hélène Lambert(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
1 Henry J. Steiner and Philip Alston, International Human Rights in Context – Law, Politics, Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), Chapter 12. 163 164 The law in world politics The content of international human rights law There exist today more than one hundred international treaties on the protection of human rights; some of a multilateral character, others of a bilateral character. In addition, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has recognised that all United Nations (UN) member states have a legal obligation to respect human rights under the UN Charter and under gen-eral International Law. 2 It further held that some universally recognised human rights constitute not only individual rights but also generally held obligations on all governments. 3 Even though the ICJ itself has not yet defined the extent to which human rights also limit the actions of the UN (e.g., the Security Council) and of its specialised agencies, 4 a general consensus in law exists that such actions are indeed required to respect peremptory norms of general International Law, such as inalienable core human rights. This section discusses the content of human rights as being either rules (i.e., a minimal set of rules that states have clearly signed for), community values (such as universal principles or ethics) or a discourse (i.e., a process of communication, argumentation and legitimation). Human rights clearly encompass values but some lawyers tend to con-ceptualise human rights in terms of rules and principles. This view is best illustrated by the work of Ian Brownlie, Emeritus Professor of Public International Law at Oxford. In his writing for the Acad´ emie of Inter-national Law on ‘International Law at the Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations’, Brownlie considered the nature of International Law in terms of ‘the actual use of rules described as rules in International Law by Governments’.
- Charles De Visscher, Percy Ellwood Corbett, Percy Corbett(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Princeton University Press(Publisher)
BOOK II GENERAL RELATIONS OF POWER AND LAW IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS "The greatest disorder of the mind is to believe things because one wants them to be so and not because one has seen that they are so." J. B. BOSSUET. ENTRENCHED in its formal positions, doctrine long evaded direct confrontation of International Law with politics. At times it simply ignored the political, at others it at- tempted to eliminate it by artifically bringing even its most elementary data under legal criteria. The defects of such methods became increasingly marked as the pro- found upheavals in the life of the peoples forced the man of law to grasp realities more firmly. Law has everything to gain from dispelling by degrees "the dangerous mys- tery surrounding the antithesis of the political and the legal." 1 One segment of contemporary doctrine must be given credit for a new diligence in direct observation, a broader view of the factors of every sort that govern changes in international relations, and a better apprecia- tion of the resistances offered by the present distribution of power to legal regulation. ι Jean Ray, Des conflits entre Ies principes abstraits et stipu- lations conventionnelles, Rec. A.D.I., vol. 48 (1934), p. 637. CHAPTER I. THE POLITICAL FACT: ITS CRITERION POLITICAL DISPUTES. POLITICAL TENSIONS: THEIR VARIOUS FORMS F ROM a neutral and purely formal point of view, politics may be defined as the pursuit of the common good, understood as that which in a community should ensure the good of each in the good of the collectivity. In spite of its abstraction, this notion occu- pies an important place in the management of social relations. The less advanced the positive organization of these relations, the more essential that place is.
- Surabhi Ranganathan(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
92 the principle of political decision it stood should also govern these changes. Thus, they sought rules that expressed both law’s integrity (as an institution structuring State autonomy) and its instrumentality (being shaped by States). The second, related, idea is of subjects internalising the institution of law as a result of using it. 181 Jutta Brunne ´e and Stephen Toope have traced this view in Lon Fuller’s work on ‘fidelity to law’ as the result of it being possible to ‘reason’ with it – to use law. 182 For Fuller, this is the case in any legal system that has a certain inner morality, that is, if its laws satisfy eight conditions: generality, promulgation, prospectivity, clarity, coherence, stability, not demanding the impossible, and con- gruence between official action and declared rules. Brunne ´e and Toope also observe that International Law structures the practice of building, maintaining and destroying particular norms, on the basis that it is possible to achieve these ends through law. 183 The ILC commentaries reflect the same sense: that appropriately formulated rules would promote recourse to legal discourse as a means of settling competing claims. International Law could therefore provide the transactional medium even if it could not quite support strong and compulsory institutions. This would, in addition, strengthen respect for the idea of International Law in international affairs. This understanding indicates that the ILC indeed took a long view of the potential contribution of its own work. Eddies in the mainstream Contrary to accounts of the early ILC that would reduce its work – as they would reduce mainstream scholarship more generally – to a simple doctrinalism or concession to power politics, the ILC reports on treaty conflict and the writings of its individual members reveal a vision of International Law that blends philosophy, politics, anxiety and strategy.
- Onuma Yasuaki(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
For example, when neighboring nations dispute the fishing activities of the ships of their nationals, they invariably formulate the problem by relying on concepts such as territor- ial water, sovereignty, nationality and exclusive economic zones – all of which are concepts of International Law. The notions and frameworks of International Law enter the mind of the people concerned and influence their thoughts, though often unconsciously. Through such a process of 29 In fact, this is also the case with domestic law. For example, criminal law cannot compel all society members to abide by its rules in a rigid manner. A substantial number of murders and a huge number of thefts occur in every country. Yet these facts do not mean that the criminal law is meaningless. It still contributes to the overall convergence of behavior among diverse members of society. law of international society 51 influence, they induce the thoughts and behaviors of people to move in a particular direction. In this way, International Law helps to construct and reconstruct social realities. When International Law functions well and life goes on in a rou- tine manner, the ideas and institutions of International Law remain unnoticed. 30 Few are aware that norms regulating trade activities or guaranteeing non-intervention between nations function in international society. This is the same as domestic law. When things go wrong, how- ever, the existence of International Law becomes more conspicuous. Together with other institutions such as diplomacy, mediation and conciliation, International Law is expected to settle problems such as the use of force, violations of human rights, trade wars and many others. This is a major reason why International Law tends to be perceived as an institution of settling disputes rather than as ideas tacitly construing and constructing social realities.
eBook - PDF- Gianluigi Palombella, Neil Walker, Gianluigi Palombella, Neil Walker(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Hart Publishing(Publisher)
47 To be ruled by law (that is, government by law, not by men) at the international level means, according to Kumm, the follow-ing: ‘The addressees of International Law, states in particular, should obey the law. They should treat it as authoritative and let it guide and constrain their actions.’ 48 The international rule of law requires at the very least some basic legal ordering of affairs within a society, which international society no doubt enjoys. Today, indeed few people would seriously doubt that there is a body of norms that enjoy the characteristics and pedigree of law on the inter-national plane. 49 International Law is regarded as true positive law , which forms part of a real legal system, in which ‘every international situation is capable of being determined as a matter of law’, 50 as Robert Jennings and Arthur Watts have put it. These two British authors also argue that the legal determination of such issues occurs ‘either by the application of specific legal rules where they already exist, or by the application of legal rules derived, by the use of known legal techniques, from other legal rules or principles’. 51 Whilst framed in positivist legal terms, and thus open to possible strong objections, 52 the following discussion favours a concept of law that is broad enough to include International Law. i. Certainty, Predictability and Stability Borrowing from Dicey, but also from Hayek and Raz, the rule of law requires that normativity reach a degree of development sufficient to 45 M Kumm, ‘International Law in National Courts: The International Rule of Law and the Limits of the Internationalist Model’ (2003–04) 44 Virginia Journal of International Law 19. 46 Ibid , p 22. 47 See nn 30–31 above and accompanying text. 48 Kumm, n 45 above, p 22. 49 See TM Franck, Fairness in International Law and Institutions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), who speaks of the post-ontological era of International Law.
eBook - PDFTipping Points in International Law
Commitment and Critique
- Jean d'Aspremont, John Haskell(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
2 John Austin , The Province of Law Determined and the Uses of the Study of Jurisprudence (1998); H. L. A. Hart , The Concept of Law (1997). 3 For a representative discussion, see David Bederman , The Spirit of International Law (2006). 4 See, e.g., Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro, Outcasting: Enforcement in Domestic and International Law, 121 Yale Law Journal 252 (2011). 271 A second way in which the question gets answered is to focus on the identity of International Law’s concepts, rather than a question about the concept of International Law. Indeed, the whole debate over the concept of International Law seems, from this second point of view, beside the point. What International Lawyers need to know are the rules, rules for making agreements between sovereigns and between citizens, rules for governing disputes, and rules for solving problems and getting things done. Here, the question of what International Law is gets answered by way of a doctrinal survey of the field’s more or less fundamental and peripheral concepts, from sovereignty to state responsibility, from human rights to the powers of international organisations, from the high seas to war and trade, and so on. When this doctrinal or professional form of an answer is contrasted with the ‘philosophical’ approach, the conversation seems to split in two: the first discussion no longer looks like it is so much about the ‘what’ of International Law as it is about the ‘whether’. And the ‘whether it exists’ question just seems silly to salaried lawyers and judges, quite literally in the business of doing International Law on a day-to-day basis. Ultimately, the doctrinal answer is the answer of today’s sophisticated course books and treatises: a true and practical description of the field’s legal concepts, as understood and worked out by the profession for professionals.
- Russell Buchan(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Hart Publishing(Publisher)
42 ‘[S]tate sovereignty, in its most basic sense, is being redefined – not least by forces of globalisation and international cooperation. States are now widely understood to be instru-ments at the service of their peoples, and not vice versa. At the same time, individual sover- 60 The Role of International Law community has increasingly perceived only those states that demonstrate respect for liberal democratic standards as sovereign equals. Indeed, I argue that the international community has engaged in a sustained cam-paign to promote liberal values to non-liberal states. As we shall see, the emergence of the international community has had a profound impact upon the nature and content of the international legal framework developed by the international society. 43 Stated succinctly, the international community has sought to transpose its own rules relating to the protection and promotion of liberal values into binding International Law. As will become apparent from the following discussion of the post-Cold War international legal framework, this has been achieved with increasing success as the international community has acquired greater influence within the world order. The consequence is that International Law is ‘becoming an instrument of intervention; it is being used to trans-form international society in order to make up for economic, social, or equitable imbalances’. 44 For Jouannet, this has resulted in a ‘moralisation of law’. 45 Meron describes this process as ‘the humanization of interna-tional law’. 46 What this means is that the international community is now adapting existing legal rules and developing new legal rules so as to allow for the effective protection and promotion of human rights. 47 Several examples will serve to illustrate this point.
eBook - PDFEncounters between Foreign Relations Law and International Law
Bridges and Boundaries
- Helmut Philipp Aust, Thomas Kleinlein(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
61 To the extent that La politique juridique exte´rieure can be construed as a book on foreign relations law, then, it is one that is largely dismissive of the role of domestic law, emphasising instead domestic politics of the highest order and an almost neo-realist insistence on the place of each state within the international system with deep conservative overtones. This does not mean of course that La politique juridique exte´rieure was, instead, a matter of helping and even coaxing the state to respect its International Law commitments. De Lacharrie `re was too wedded to a model of medium-power politics to think that his role as legal adviser was to ‘represent’ International Law to his government. He would have scoffed at the suggestion that he was primarily an agent of International Law within a national setting. Interestingly, however, even in his role as a legal apologist for the national interest of France, he thought quite highly of International Law as something that he understood to transcend that national interest. International Law might well be the sum of successful foreign legal policies, but it was at least that. Moreover, one did not, at least not always, win in foreign legal policy through sheer brute force. One needed to persuade, rally, entrench certain forms of legal reasoning, in the hope that they would catch on and would, in turn, become International Law. This is an exercise that conventional International Lawyers would probably recognise as coming quite close to their lived experi- ence of the making of International Law. Foreign legal relations, then, were certainly not determined by domestic law and was certainly more than the implementation of International Law.
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