Routledge Research in International Law – serie

Societies and states are at a crossroad in how children are treated and how their rights are respected and protected. Children´s new position and their strong rights create tensions and challenge the traditional relationships between family and the state. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted unanimously by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1989 and came into force in 1990. Article 2 places states under an obligation to accord primacy to the best interests of the child in all actions concerning children and to ensure and regulate child protection. This book offers a comparative and critical analysis of the implementation of Article 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. In order to examine how Article 2 is being implemented, it is essential to have a sound understanding of the obligations it emposes. The opening chapters will explore the precise content of these obligations in terms of the legislative history of the text, its underlying philosophy, its amplification by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, and subsequent authoritative interpretations of it by courts around the world. The book will then drill down into the conceptual and theoretical challenges posed by the very nature of the obligations and will offer in-depth exploration of the long-running ‘rights v welfare’ debate that has always presented something of a challenge in giving effect to children’s rights. Contributors are leading academics in the children’s rights field drawn from a wide range of countries and jurisdictions worldwide, including those with common law, civilian and mixed traditions. Disciplines represented in the book include law, psychology, political science, childhood studies, social work and anthropology. By drawing together the various facets of Article 2 and analysing it from a range of perspectives, the volume provides a coherent and comprehensive inter-disciplinary analysis on discrimination and the rights of the child.

With the sensational arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998, the rise to prominence of universal jurisdiction over crimes against international law seemed to be assured. The arrest of Pinochet and the ensuing proceedings before the UK courts brought universal jurisdiction into the foreground of the "fight against impunity" and the principle was read as an important complementary mechanism for international justice –one that could offer justice to victims denied an avenue by the limited jurisdiction of international criminal tribunals. Yet by the time of the International Court of Justice’s Arrest Warrant judgment four years later, the picture looked much bleaker and the principle was being read as a potential tool for politically motivated trials. This book explores the debate over universal jurisdiction in international criminal law, aiming to unpack a practice in which international lawyers continue to disagree over the concept of universal jurisdiction. Using Martti Koskenniemi’s work as a foil, this book exposes the argumentative techniques in operation in national and international adjudication since the 1990s. Drawing on overarching patterns within the debate, Aisling O’Sullivan argues that it is bounded by a tension between contrasting political preferences or positions, labelled as moralist ("ending impunity") and formalist ("avoiding abuse") and she reads the debate as a movement of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic positions that struggle for hegemonic control. However, she draws out how these positions (moralist/formalist) merge into one another and this produces a tendency towards a "middle" position that continues to prefer a particular preference (moralist or formalist). Aisling O’Sullivan then traces the transformation towards this tendency that reflects an internal split among international lawyers between building a utopia ("court of humanity") and recognizing its impossibility of being realized.

Since the Second World War, the international community has sought to prevent the repetition of destructive far-right forces by establishing institutions such as the United Nations and by adopting documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Jurisprudence and conventions directly prohibit far-right speech and expression. Nevertheless, recently, violent far-right entities, such as Golden Dawn of Greece, have received unprecedented electoral support, xenophobic parties have done spectacularly well in elections; and countries such as Hungary and Poland are being led by right-wing populists who are bringing constitutional upheaval and violating basic elements of doctrines such as the rule of law.In light of this current reality, this book critically assesses the international and European tools available for States to regulate the far-right. It conducts the analysis through a militant democracy lens. This doctrine has been considered in several arenas as a concept more generally; in the sphere of the European Convention on Human Rights; in relation to particular freedoms, such as that of association; and as a tool for challenging the far-right movement through the spectrum of political science. However, this doctrine has not yet been applied within a legal assessment of challenging the far-right as a single entity. After analysing the aims, objectives, scope and possibility of shortcomings in international and European law, the book looks at what state obligations arise from these laws. It then assesses how freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of association and freedom of assembly are provided for in international and European law and explores what limitation grounds exist which are directly relevant to the regulation of the far-right.The issue of the far-right is a pressing one on the agenda of politicians, academics, civil society and other groups in Europe and beyond. As such, this book will appeal to those with an interest in International, European or Human rights Law and political science.

This book explores the historical inter-relations between international law and revolution, with a focus on how international anti-capitalist struggle plays out through law. The book approaches the topic by analysing the meaning of revolution and what revolutionary activity might look like, before comparing this with legal activity, to assess the basic compatibility between the two. It then moves on to examine two prominent examples of revolutionary movements engaging with international law from the twentieth century; the early Soviet Union and the Third World movement in the nineteen sixties and seventies. The book proposes that the ‘form of law’, or its base logic, is rooted in capitalist social relations of private property and contract, and that therefore the law is a particularly inhospitable place to advance revolutionary breaks with established distributions of power or wealth. This does not mean that the law is irrelevant to revolutionaries, but that turning to legal means comes with tendencies towards conservative outcomes. In the light of this, the book considers the possibility of how, or whether, international law might contribute to the pursuit of a more egalitarian future. International Law and Revolution fills a significant gap in the field of international legal theory by offering a deep theoretical reflection on the meaning of the concept of revolution for the twenty-first century, and its link to the international legal system. It develops the commodity form theory of law as applied to international law, and explores the limits of law for progressive social struggle, informed by historical analysis. It will therefore appeal to students and scholars of public international law, legal history, human rights, international politics and political history.

This book explores the ‘backstage’ of transnational legal practice by illuminating the routines and habits that are crucial to the field, yet rarely studied. Through innovative discussion of practices often considered trivial, the book encourages readers to conceptualise the ‘backstage’ as emblematic of transnational legal practice. Expanding the focus of transnational legal scholarship, the book explores the seemingly mundane procedures which are often taken for granted, despite being widely recognized as part of what it means to ‘do transnational law’. Adopting various methodologies and approaches, each chapter focuses on one specific practice: for example, mooting exercises for law students, international travel, transnational time, the social media activities of lawyers and legal scholars, and the networking at the ICC’s annual Assembly of States Parties. In and of themselves, these chapters each provide unique insights into what happens before the curtain rises and after it falls on the familiar ‘outputs’ of transnational law. It does more, however, than provide a range of different practices: it takes the next step in theorizing on the importance of the marginal and the everyday for what we ‘know’ to be ‘the law’ and what the international legal field looks like. Furthermore, by interrogating undiscussed academic practices, it provides students with a candid view on the perils and promises of transnational legal scholarship, inviting them to join the discussion and to practice their discipline in a more reflexive way. Written in an accessible format, containing a readable collection of personal and recognizable accounts of transnational legal practice, the book provides an everyday insight into transnational law. It will therefore appeal to international legal scholars, alongside any reader with an interest in transnational law.

Sustainable development calls for a balance to be struck between the promotion of trade and environmental protection. This book investigates how to strike such a balance in practice by assessing the relationship between WTO Agreements and the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.The book provides a systematic exploration of how the general international rules on conflict of norms apply to the relationship between the two WTO Agreements and the Protocol, and the extent to which this specific relationship might influence how treaty conflicts should be dealt with generally in international law. Based on both doctrinal and original empirical evidence, this book goes beyond the principle of systemic integration in treaty interpretation which is generally relied upon as a conflict avoidance technique at the international adjudicative level. It further discerns a number of principles that underlie systemic integration, including the principles of mutual supportiveness, good faith, cooperation, and harmonization. These principles could be applied to potentially avoid treaty conflicts and are capable of driving reconciliation at not only the international judicial, but also the international institutional and domestic levels.This book will be a valuable resource for scholars and policymakers in the fields of international economic law, international environmental law and public international law.

The UN Security Council is entrusted under the UN Charter with primary responsibility for the maintenance and restoration of the international peace; it is the only body with the power to authorise military intervention legally and impose international sanctions where it decides. However, its decision-making process has hitherto been obscure and allegations of political bias have been made against the Security Council in its responses to potential international threats. Despite the rule of law featuring on the Security Council’s agenda for over a decade and a UN General Assembly declaration in 2012 establishing that the rule of law should apply internally to the UN, the Security Council has yet to formulate or incorporate a rule of law framework that would govern its decision-making process. This book explains the necessity of a rule of law framework for the Security Council before analysing existing literature and UN documents on the domestic and international rule of law in search of concepts suitable for transposition to the arena of the Security Council. It emerges with eight core components, which form a bespoke rule of law framework for the Security Council. Against this framework, the Security Council’s decision-making process since the end of the Cold War is meticulously evaluated, illustrating explicitly where and how the rule of law has been undermined or neglected in its behaviour. Ultimately, the book concludes that the Security Council and other bodies are unwilling or unable adequately to regulate the decision-making process against a suitable rule of law framework, and argues that there exists a need for the external regulation of Council practice and judicial review of its decisions.

This book explores the right to democracy in international law and contemporary democratic theory, asking whether international law encompasses a substantive or procedural understanding of the notion. The book considers whether there can be considered to be a basis for the right to democracy in international customary law through identification of the relevant State practice and opinio juris, as well as through an evaluation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and whether the relevant provisions might be interpreted as forming customary law. The book then goes on to explore the relevant provisions in international treaties including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights before looking at the role of regional organizations and human rights regimes including the European Court of Human Rights and the Arab human rights regime. Khalifa A. Alfadhel draws on the work of John Rawls in order to put forward a theoretical basis for the right to democracy.

Many conflicts throughout the world can be characterized as sovereignty conflicts in which two states claim exclusive sovereign rights for different reasons over the same piece of land. It is increasingly clear that the available remedies have been less than successful in many of these cases, and that a peaceful and definitive solution is needed. This book proposes a fair and just way of dealing with certain sovereignty conflicts. Drawing on the work of John Rawls in A Theory of Justice, this book considers how distributive justice theories can be in tune with the concept of sovereignty and explores the possibility of a solution for sovereignty conflicts based on Rawlsian methodology. Jorge E. Núñez explores a solution of egalitarian shared sovereignty, evaluating what sorts of institutions and arrangements could, and would, best realize shared sovereignty, and how it might be applied to territory, population, government, and law.

Adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, this book opens new ground for research on territorial disputes. Many sovereignty conflicts remain unresolved around the world. Current solutions in law, political science and international relations generally prove problematic to at least one of the agents part of these differences. Arguing that disputes are complex, multi-layered and multi-faceted, this book brings together a global, inter-disciplinary view of territorial disputes. The book reviews the key conceptual elements central to legal and political sciences with regards to territorial disputes: state, sovereignty and self-determination. Looking at some of the current long-standing disputes worldwide, it compares and contrasts the many issues at stake and the potential remedies currently available in order to assess why some territorial disputes remain unresolved. Finally, it offers a set of guidelines for dispute settlement and conflict resolution that current remedies fail to provide.It will appeal to students and scholars working in international relations, legal theory and jurisprudence, public international law and political sciences.

The dogma of the sovereignty of the state, deriving from the Peace of Westphalia, underpins much of the modern-day international system. However, developments in recent technology have led this ideology to depart from reality. Viewing state sovereignty through the prism of public international law, the book will begin with an overview of the settlement of Westphalia, how it has influenced international documents ever since, and how the advantages of centralised decisions came to be perceived. By surveying the Law of the Sea, Maritime Law, Air and Aviation, Telecommunications, Postal Services, Space Law and Mensuration, the book demonstrates how, in each, the interplay between state sovereignty and developing technologies have caused significant legal change. Some changes, Lyall argues, such as international measures of time and geography, have been born out of convenience, facilitated by technology developed for the purpose. Other areas of change developed out of a desire to reconcile conflicts or harmonise necessary state regulation. The book analyses the reasons behind these changes and discusses the ongoing attempts to balance state equality, measures adopted by new institutions to secure comprehensive representation. It ends by looking to the future of state sovereignty in an increasingly globalised world. The book is of use to any student or scholar interested in policy making, international law and international affairs, both legal and scientific, as well as those looking at legal administrative issues and government officiation.

Nationalization disputes in natural resources development are among the most disputed issues of international investment law. This book offers a fresh insight into the nature of nationalization disputes in natural resources development and the rules of international investment law governing them by systematically analyzing (1) the content of investment contracts in natural resources development, and (2) the results of nationalization disputes in natural resources development from the perspective of dynamic bargaining theory. Based on the comprehensive and systematic empirical analyses, the book sheds new light on contractual renegotiation and renewal as a hardly known but practically normal solution of nationalization disputes and presents a set of soft law rules governing contractual renegotiation and renewal.

This book proposes a re-interpretation of Article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations to read, or at least include, respect for the inviolability of State territory. While States purport to obey the prohibition of the Use of Force, they frequently engage in activities that could undermine international peace and security. In this book the author argues that State practice, opinio juris, as well as contentious and advisory opinions of the International Court of Justice, have promoted the first limb of Article 2(4). Although wars between States have decreased, the maintenance of international peace and security remains a mirage, as shown by the increase in intra- and inter-State conflicts across the world. The author seeks to initiate a rethinking of the provision of Article 2(4), which the International Court of Justice has described as the cornerstone of the United Nations. The author argues that the time is ripe for States to embrace an evolutive interpretation of Article 2(4) to mean respect, as opposed to the traditional view of the threat, or the use, of force. He also evaluates the discourse regarding territorial jurisdiction in cyberspace and argues that the efforts made by the international community to apply Article 2(4) to cyberspace suggest that the article is a flexible and live instrument that should be adjusted to address the circumstances that endanger international peace and security.This book will engineer a serious debate regarding the scope of Article 2(4), which before now has always been limited to the threat or use of force. As a result, it will be of interest to academics and students of public international law, as well as diplomats and policymakers.

This edited volume presents research and policy insights into the theory and practice of dispute systems reform in diverse jurisdictions. It highlights how important extra-judicial mechanisms are for resolving cross-border disputes, as evidenced both by the breadth of scholarship dedicated to the issue and the proliferation of parties resorting to non-litigious dispute resolution mechanisms in recent years. Drawing on selected case studies, the book examines the impact of comparative research and policy analysis in advancing reform of dispute resolution institutions at both the regional and global levels. It explores the challenges and opportunities of understanding and assessing developments in systems of dispute resolution in diverse social and political contexts through comparative research.With a growing number of disputes which have come to involve cross-border issues, anyone interested in transnational and comparative dispute resolution will find this book a useful reference.

This book offers a critical examination of the jurisprudence of the World Trade Organization (WTO) as an emancipatory international social contract on trade.The book suggests that the WTO is an international organization built and operating on member states’ attribution of authority through consent with legislative, administrative, and adjudicative functions – three functions in one triune personality. With a solid constitutional continuity building on GATT experiences, the WTO has successfully made governments accountable to foreign individuals in various capacities either as traders of goods, providers of services, or holders of intellectual property rights within the global marketplace. With a triune personality, the WTO operates within the reign of state primacy – the force – ultimately for the benefits of individuals – the ends – in the global marketplace, and gains a soul of its own in the institutional evolution – the means – of the global trading regime. Although the tripartite dynamics between states, international institutions, and individuals in the global marketplace are unprecedentedly complex, the WTO’s ends of benefiting individuals in the global marketplace has no end. Beyond the critical analysis of WTO’s decision-making by consensus, the book critically examines GATT’s "common intention" treaty interpretation, Antidumping’s NME methodology, TRIPS’ public health concerns, and IP-competition trade policy dynamics. A unified WTO jurisprudence looking at the WTO as an international social contract on trade is therefore proposed to allow a fresh look at the force, the means, and the ends of the constitutional evolution of the global trading regime.

This book offers a stimulating introduction to the links between areas of global governance, human rights global economy and international law. By drawing on a range of diverse subject areas, it argues that the foundations of global governance, human rights and international law are undermined by a conflict or ‘tragic flaw’, where insistence on absolute conceptions of state sovereignty are pitted against universally accepted principles of justice and human rights resulting in destructive self-interest for both the state and the global community. Following the election of President Donald Trump , the second edition will explores how we are witnessing a critical battle to ensure that human rights, international law and the beneficial aspects of globalization will still be relevant and applied in some of the critical institutions of global governance and in the operations of the global private sector. The second edition will focus on how States, institutions and global civil society will have to ramp up the struggle to fight this ‘tragic flaw’ that is now even more evident with the actions of the US and other authoritarian states, like China and Russia in this second decade of the 21st Century.

This book offers a critical examination of the jurisprudence of the World Trade Organization (WTO) as an emancipatory international social contract on trade.The book suggests that the WTO is an international organization built and operating on member states’ attribution of authority through consent with legislative, administrative, and adjudicative functions – three functions in one triune personality. With a solid constitutional continuity building on GATT experiences, the WTO has successfully made governments accountable to foreign individuals in various capacities either as traders of goods, providers of services, or holders of intellectual property rights within the global marketplace. With a triune personality, the WTO operates within the reign of state primacy – the force – ultimately for the benefits of individuals – the ends – in the global marketplace, and gains a soul of its own in the institutional evolution – the means – of the global trading regime. Although the tripartite dynamics between states, international institutions, and individuals in the global marketplace are unprecedentedly complex, the WTO’s ends of benefiting individuals in the global marketplace has no end. Beyond the critical analysis of WTO’s decision-making by consensus, the book critically examines GATT’s "common intention" treaty interpretation, Antidumping’s NME methodology, TRIPS’ public health concerns, and IP-competition trade policy dynamics. A unified WTO jurisprudence looking at the WTO as an international social contract on trade is therefore proposed to allow a fresh look at the force, the means, and the ends of the constitutional evolution of the global trading regime.

This book proposes a re-interpretation of Article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations to read, or at least include, respect for the inviolability of State territory. While States purport to obey the prohibition of the Use of Force, they frequently engage in activities that could undermine international peace and security. In this book the author argues that State practice, opinio juris, as well as contentious and advisory opinions of the International Court of Justice, have promoted the first limb of Article 2(4). Although wars between States have decreased, the maintenance of international peace and security remains a mirage, as shown by the increase in intra- and inter-State conflicts across the world. The author seeks to initiate a rethinking of the provision of Article 2(4), which the International Court of Justice has described as the cornerstone of the United Nations. The author argues that the time is ripe for States to embrace an evolutive interpretation of Article 2(4) to mean respect, as opposed to the traditional view of the threat, or the use, of force. He also evaluates the discourse regarding territorial jurisdiction in cyberspace and argues that the efforts made by the international community to apply Article 2(4) to cyberspace suggest that the article is a flexible and live instrument that should be adjusted to address the circumstances that endanger international peace and security.This book will engineer a serious debate regarding the scope of Article 2(4), which before now has always been limited to the threat or use of force. As a result, it will be of interest to academics and students of public international law, as well as diplomats and policymakers.

Adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, this book opens new ground for research on territorial disputes. Many sovereignty conflicts remain unresolved around the world. Current solutions in law, political science and international relations generally prove problematic to at least one of the agents part of these differences. Arguing that disputes are complex, multi-layered and multi-faceted, this book brings together a global, inter-disciplinary view of territorial disputes. The book reviews the key conceptual elements central to legal and political sciences with regards to territorial disputes: state, sovereignty and self-determination. Looking at some of the current long-standing disputes worldwide, it compares and contrasts the many issues at stake and the potential remedies currently available in order to assess why some territorial disputes remain unresolved. Finally, it offers a set of guidelines for dispute settlement and conflict resolution that current remedies fail to provide.It will appeal to students and scholars working in international relations, legal theory and jurisprudence, public international law and political sciences.

This book provides for an extensive legal analysis of the international drug control system in light of the growing challenges and criticism that this system faces. In the current debate on global drug policy, the central pillars of the international drug control system – the UN Drug Conventions as well as its institutions – are portrayed as outdated, suppressive and seen as an obstacle to necessary changes. The book’s objective is to provide an in-depth and positivist insight into drug control’s present legal framework and thus provide for a better understanding of the normative assumptions upon which drug control is currently based. This is attained by clarifying the objectives of the international drug control system and the premises by which these objectives are to be achieved. The objective of the current global framework of international drug control is the limitation of drugs to medical and scientific purposes. The meaning of this objective and its concrete implications for States’ parties as well as its problems from the perspective of other regimes of international law, most notably international human rights law, are extensively analysed. Additionally, the book focuses on how the international drug control system attempts to reach the objective of confining drugs to medical and scientific purposes, i.e. by setting up a universal system that exercises a rigid control on drug supply. The consequences of this heavy focus on the reduction of drug supply are outlined, and the book concludes by making suggestions on how the international drug control system could be reformed in the near future in order to better meet the existing challenges.The analysis occurs from a general international law perspective. It aims to map the international drug control system within a wider context of international law and to understand whether the problems that the international drug control system faces are exemplary for the difficulties that institutionalized systems of global scope face in the twenty-first century.

A number of recent events in the last decade have renewed interest in Russian discourses on international law. This book evaluates and presents a contemporary analysis of Russian discourses on international law from various perspectives, including sociological, theoretical, political, and philosophical. The aim is to identify how Russia interacts with international law, the reasons behind such interactions, and how such interactions compare with the general practice of international law. It also examines whether legal culture and other phenomena can justify Russia’s interaction in international law.Russian Discourses on International Law explains Russia's interpretation of international law through the lens of both leading western scholars and contemporary western-based Russian scholars. It will be of value to international law scholars looking for a better understanding of Russia’s behavior in international legal relations, law and society, foreign policy, and domestic application of international law. Further, those in fields such as sociology, politics, philosophy, or general graduate students, lawyers, think tanks, government departments, and specialized Russian studies programs will find the book helpful.

In a context of neoliberal globalization, have the processes of elaboration and implementation of foreign investors' responsibilities by intergovernmental organizations reached the realm of legality? Using an analytical framework and a methodology that combines international law with international relations, this book provides a twofold answer to thisquestion. First, it demonstrates that the normative integration of foreign investors' responsibilities in international investment law is fragmented and consistent with the interests of the most powerful actors. Second, while using the interactional theory of international law to assess the normative character of several international instruments elaborated and implemented by intergovernmental organizations, it highlights the sense of obligation that each instrument generates. The analysis demonstrates that such a codification process is marked by relations of power and has resulted in several social norms, with relatively few legal norms.

Attacks by network-based transnational terrorist groups cause on average 25,000 deaths every year worldwide, with the law enforcement agencies of some states facing many challenges in bringing those responsible to justice. Despite various attempts to codify the law on transnational terrorism since the 1930s, a crime of transnational terrorism under international law remains contested, reflecting concerns regarding the relative importance of prosecuting members of transnational terrorist groups before the International Criminal Court. This book critically examines the limits of international criminal law in bringing members of transnational terrorist groups to justice in the context of changing methods of warfare, drawing from human rights, sociology, and best practices in international criminal justice. Drawing on organisational network theory, Anna Marie Brennan explores the nature of international crimes and assesses the potential for the International Criminal Court to prosecute and investigate alleged crimes perpetrated by members of transnational terrorist groups, paying particular attention to their modus operandi and organisational structure. This book argues that because of the network-based organisational structure of some transnational terrorist groups, achieving justice for victims will prove challenging, in the context of the relationship between the commanders and the subordinate members of the group requiring a re-evaluation of accountability mechanisms at the international level. In advancing an innovative perspective on the accountability of members of transnational terrorist groups, and in offering solutions to current challenges, the book will be of great interest and use to academic, practitioners, and students engaged in the study of terrorism, the ICC, or international humanitarian law.

We are in a moment where peoples and states are interested, directly or indirectly, in asserting their "national interest," unilaterally if necessary. In the White House, the national security policy is premised on "America First," while Catalans and Iraqi Kurds have taken steps to unilaterally declare their independence. All of these actions have generated tension both domestically and internationally. However, even though the potential for unilateral action has been receiving a lot of attention, the larger issue of the legality of unilateral acts is often hard to discern. This book provides a history of the doctrine of unilateral acts in international law, tracing their treatment in the international sphere from consent based acts, to obligations erga omnes, to acts of estoppel.Through chapter-by-chapter case studies, this book traces the "legalization" of the category of unilateral acts from its 19th Century foundations into a broad category of obligation. To understand why and how this occurred, this book examines the history of the legal doctrine of unilateral acts, which shows that in spite of efforts to progressively make unilateral acts "legal" they are still not precisely defined or easy to apply, challenging the very commitment these acts are meant to establish.

This book explores the prosecution of wartime sexual violence in international criminal law and asks what the juridicalisation of gender-based violence signifies for women. The book explores the portrayal of the various gendered identities that surface in armed conflict and it asks whether the law is capable of reflecting these in subsequent judgements.Focusing on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda as well as subsequent developments in the International Criminal Court, the book shows how the tribunals have delivered landmark jurisprudence in the area of sexual violence against women and provided a legacy for how gender justice is incorporated into international law. However, Daniela Nadj argues that in the relevant cases there is a tendency to depict women in monolithic fashion with little agency or sense of identity beyond their ethnicity. By bringing to the surface the complexity and multi-faceted gendered identities in wartime, the book calls for a reconceptualisation of notions of femininity in armed conflict.

Offering a study of regionalism in Africa and investigating the ways in which law can be used to address the issues raised by regional processes on the continent, this book examines the African Economic Community, considering that it has been entrusted to coordinate and to harmonize policies between various Regional Economic Communities (RECs) across the continent, thereby influencing the continent’s approach towards regional integration. It seeks to identify how law can be used to strengthen the African RECs while ensuring that they achieve their goal of promoting regional development across the continent. Drawing upon economic and political theories, and using a critical doctrinal analysis of legal texts and norms, the book uncovers the legal and economic underpinnings of the model of regional integration followed by the regional schemes operating under the banner of the AEC, aiming to contribute to the search for effective methods to ensure the success of these various initiatives. Proposing the concept of "Regional Developmentalism Through Law" as the most suitable conceptual framework to support the effective establishment of an African Economic Community, this book will be of interest to researchers, academics and policy makers interested in the correlation between law, regional integration and development in Africa.

The concept of the One Belt One Road initiative (OBOR) was raised by the President of the People’s Republic of China in October 2013. The OBOR comprises the ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ and the ‘21st Century Maritime Silk Road’, encompassing over 60 countries from Asia to Europe via Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, West Asia, and the Middle East. The overall objective of the OBOR is to encourage the economic prosperity of the countries along the Belt and Road and regional economic cooperation, encourage mutual learning between different civilizations, and promoting peace and development. However, countries along the Belt and Road routes of the OBOR project have diverse laws and legal systems. It is not difficult to envisage problems relating to harmonisation of laws and rules in trade between countries along the OBOR routes or otherwise. These problems can potentially cut through the core of the very objective of the OBOR itself. Integration in China’s One Belt One Road Initiative explores possible challenges to the success of the OBOR arising from the situational interface of diversity of laws, with the focus primarily on issues associated with private international law. It shows the latest state of knowledge on the topic and will be of interest to researchers, academics, policymakers, and students interested in private international law issues pertaining to the OBOR routes as well as private international law in general, Asian studies, and the politics of international trade.

This book addresses the disparity between positive non-treaty law and its scholarly assessment in the area of moral concepts, understood as altruistic as opposed to reciprocal legal obligations. It shows how scholars are generously willing to assert the existence of a rule of international law, thereby moving further away from actual state practice, not taking into account the factors of legal rhetoric and the core survival interests of the state in the formation of custom and general principles of law. The main argument is that such moral concepts can simply not manifest themselves as non-treaty sources of international law from a dogmatic perspective. The reason is the inherent connection between the formation of the non-treaty sources of international law and state interest that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to assess state practice or opinio juris in the case of altruistic obligations. The book further demonstrates this finding by looking at two cases in point: Human rights and humanitarian exceptions tothe prohibition of force. As opposed to the majority of existing works on the subject, State Interest and the Sources of International Law takes a bigger-picture approach to a number of distinct problems in international law scholarship by looking at the building blocks of international relations on the one hand, and merging this with sources doctrine on the other. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of international law, human rights, international relations, political science, legal philosophy, and legal theory.

This book seeks to re-appreciate the concept of customary international law as a form of spontaneous societal self-organisation, and to develop the methodological consequences that ensue from this conception for the practice of its application. In pursuing this aim, the author draws from three different strands of scholarship that have not yet been considered in connection with one another: First, general jurisprudential theories of customary law; second, theories of customary international law, especially as they relate to international relations scholarship; and third, methodological approaches to the interpretation of international law. This expansive, philosophical layout of the book enables the author to put the conceptual enigmas of customary international law into a broader perspective.Among the issues discussed in the book are the dichotomy of its traditional and modern forms and the respective benefits and disadvantages of inductive and deductive approaches to its ascertainment. In the course of this analysis, the author draws insights from Friedrich August Hayek’s theory of law as a ‘spontaneous order’, an information-processing device which enables the participants of a legal system to make use of decentralised knowledge. The book argues that the major advantage of custom as a source of international law lies in the fact that it is the result of a gradual process of trial and error, rather than the product of deliberate planning. This makes it a particularly apposite source of law in a time of seismic shifts in the distribution of power within a vastly diverse community of States, when a new global order is expected to emerge, the contours of which are not yet clearly discernible.This book applies general concepts of legal philosophy to explain the continuing relevance of custom as a source of international law while at the same time inferring from this theoretical framework concrete practical and methodological consequences, the most important of which is the special role that purposive interpretation plays with respect to rules of international custom. Given this broad approach, the book will be of interest to several groups of potential readers including academics interested in the philosophy of customary law in general, academic international lawyers and legal practitioners, especially judges, scholars of international relations and all those interested in how the international community of States organises itself.