Library of Essays in International Law – serie

In the wake of the adoption by the International Law Commission of a complete set of articles on state responsibility in international law in 2001, this collection assembles a number of essays tracing key debates which have marked the evolution of this field over the last fifty years. These include explorations of the general theory of state responsibility (link between ’primary’ and ’secondary’ rules, the place of due diligence, the link between liability and wrongfulness), the consequences of an internationally wrongful act (nature of remedies, suitability of countermeasures, third states and the shift from bilateralism to community interests in the law of state responsibility), the debate over criminalizing state responsibility, and the continuing relevance of the law of injuries to aliens. The collection also contains a series of essays offering critical perspectives on state responsibility, including feminist and developing world perspectives. It is completed by an extensive and up-to-date bibliography.

International law is a social construct crafted by human endeavour to achieve or at least contribute to the achievement of goals perceived to be valuable or necessary to effective social relations. In effect, international law is no more than a facilitative process and so cannot have answers and conclusions of its own other than what lies within the ambitions of those who define the limits of the process. The essays collected together here reveal how international law facilitates the achievement of the long standing ambition of turning human rights ideals and rhetoric into reality.

The very purpose of international law is the peaceful settlement of international disputes. Over centuries, states and more recently, organizations have created substantive rules and principles, as well as affiliated procedures, in the pursuit of the peaceful settlement of disputes. This volume of the Library of Essays in International Law focuses on the classic procedures of peaceful settlement: negotiation, good offices, inquiry, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, and agencies for dispute resolution. The introduction provides a unique historic overview, explaining how the procedures first developed and changed over time. Each chapter features a seminal essay that helped create the changes described in the introduction. Being at the center of international law, dispute resolution has always been a core topic of international scholarship, this volume brings together for the first time, the pivotal writing in the field.

This volume makes accessible a selection of the most significant journal articles dealing with international crimes. The studies collected here will be an invaluable aid to teaching and research.

The centrality of treaties to the international legal system requires little emphasis. Not only is the treaty a source of law that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is bound to apply when resolving international disputes, but it is also the medium through which the vast preponderance of international legal intercourse is now conducted. The essays contained in this informative volume disclose a wide variety of opinion on a broad range of issues concerning the conclusion, application and termination of treaties.

Peacekeeping has been the technique most frequently used by, and associated with, the United Nations to end conflicts and to preserve peace. In addition, international and regional organizations have also performed peacekeeping functions. Since the establishment of the first UN peacekeeping mission, UNEF I, in 1956, international lawyers have raised questions about the legal aspects of these operations. Traditionally, they analyzed the constitutional basis for peacekeeping and tried to allocate the authority under the UN Charter for peacekeeping among the Security Council, the General Assembly and the Secretary General. They discussed the use of force by peacekeepers, the applicability of international humanitarian law, as well as the responsibilities and liabilities of peacekeepers. Since the end of the cold war, peacekeeping operations have become more complex. In the first forty years, peacekeepers functioned mainly as buffer zones between warring parties and monitored cease-fires. Nowadays, they are increasingly engaged in internal rather than international conflicts and perform a multitude of tasks. Among others, they act as civilian administrators, oversee elections and monitor human rights. These changes have raised new legal problems. Which human rights obligations exist for peacekeepers? Do peacekeepers have to intervene if they witness war crimes and acts of genocide? How are they protected under international law? What is the legal framework of UN administrations like in Kosovo and East Timor? In order to enhance a better understanding of these legal issues arising from peacekeeping operations, a collection of articles written by the leading experts in the field have been compiled in the volume, International Peacekeeping.

During the 1990s, the international system underwent major changes with the end of the ideological divide that was the Cold War. At this time the international system experienced a major movement with the widespread adoption of democratic systems leading academics to speak of an international victory for democracy, a third wave of democratisation and an emerging right to democratic governance. Within a short period of time international law went from a position of supposed ideological neutrality to actively supporting the idea and practice of democracy. Concerns for democracy have been expressed in relation to membership to international organisations, international human rights law, trade conditionality, the process of recognition, multiple levels of governance, election monitoring and as a justification for the use of force. The essays in this collection will provide the reader with the key works in the debate about democracy in international law, demonstrating the wide influence democracy has had, the controversies that surround it and its importance for international law and relations.

International organizations have come to occupy a central position in international governance, exercising many public functions and facilitating political debate amongst states and other actors, though it is only recently that the focus of legal discussions has begun to shift to controlling the activities of organizations. This volume assembles sixteen important essays addressing various issues relating to the law of international organizations, highlighting theoretical issues and ongoing political debates and emphasizing issues of control. The introductory essay provides an overview of the development of the politico-legal debate and situates the law of international organizations historically and in its contemporary context.

The relationship between modern international law and Islamic law has raised many theoretical and practical questions that cannot be ignored in the contemporary study and understanding of both international law and Islamic law. The significance and relevance of this relationship in both academic and practical terms, especially after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, is now well understood. Recent international events in particular corroborate the need for a better understanding of the relationship between contemporary international law and Islamic law and how their interaction can be explored and improved to enhance modern international relations and international law. The articles reproduced in this volume examine the issues of General Principles of International Law, International Use of Force, International Humanitarian Law, International Terrorism, International Protection of Diplomats, International Environmental and Water Law, Universality of Human Rights, Women's Rights, Rights of the Child, Rights of Religious Minorities, and State Practice. The essays have been carefully selected to reflect, as much as possible, the different Islamic perspectives on each of these aspects of international law.

The essays selected and reproduced in this volume explore how international refugee law is dynamic and constantly evolving. From an instrument designed to protect mostly those civilians fleeing the worse excesses of World War II, the 1951 Refugee Convention has developed into a set of principles, customary rules, and values that are now firmly embedded in the human rights framework, and are applicable to a far broader range of refugees. In addition, international refugee law has been affected by international humanitarian law and international criminal law (and vice versa). Thus, there is a reinforcing dynamic in the development of these complementary areas of law. At the same time, in recent decades states have shown a renewed interest in managing migration, thereby raising issues of how to reconcile such interests with refugee protection principles. In addition, the emergence of concepts of participation and responsibility to protect promise to have an impact on international refugee law.

Who or what is entitled to act on the international plane? Where should responsibility for violations of international law lie? What sort of entities are capable of possessing international legal rights? What is the status of individuals, minority groups, non-governmental bodies, international organisations and animals in the international legal order and how has their status shifted over time? International Legal Personality contains fourteen articles that address these and related questions. In historical and contemporary writings, international lawyers grapple with the nature of legal identity, and confront global distributions of authority and responsibility, as they explore who or what is a 'person' in the international legal order. These essays document the emergence of an international legal order increasingly conceived in terms of patterns and probabilities, rather than as the stagecraft of a small company of permanent players.

The expression 'non-state actors' has become part and parcel of the common parlance of international lawyers. Together with the traditional subjects of international law, such as states and international organizations, non-state actors play an important role in international law-making, law-adjudication and law-enforcement processes. Although the subjects/actors discourse takes place in a variety of contexts, most of the time the relevant narrative merely describes how different actors participate in the legal process in any given area. Little attention has been drawn to the theoretical discourse about non-state actors and its relation to the doctrine of the subjects of international law. Whether the solution lies in 'relativizing' the subjects or rather in 'subjectivizing' the actors remains open to doubt. The constant swing of the pendulum from the normative to the descriptive mesmerizes the observer but hardly hides the struggle for determining who may legitimately and authoritatively perform legally relevant acts on the international scene.

This series brings together the most significant published journal articles in international law as determined by the editors of each volume in the series. The proliferation of law, specialist journals, the increase in international materials and the use of the internet has meant that it is increasingly difficult for students and legal scholars to have access to all the relevant articles. Many valuable older articles are unable to be obtained readily. In addition each volume contains an informative introduction which provides an overview of the subject matter and justification of why the articles were collected. This series contains collections of articles in a manner that is of use for both teaching and research.