BOOK: Martti KOSKENNIEMI, Mónica GARCÍA-SALMONES ROVIRA & Paolo Amorosa, International Law and Religion. Historical and Comparative Perspectives [The Theory and History of International Law, eds. Nehal BHUTA, Anthony PAGDEN & Benjamin STRAUMANN] (Oxford: OUP, 2017), 480 p. ISBN 9780198805878, £ 80

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Abstract:

This book maps out the territory of international law and religion challenging received traditions in fundamental aspects. On the one hand, the connection of international law and religion has been little explored. On the other, most of current research on international legal thought presents international law as the very victory of secularization. By questioning that narrative of secularization this book approaches these traditions from a new perspective. From the Middle Ages' early conceptualizations of rights and law to contemporary political theory, the chapters bring to life debates concerning the interaction of the meaning of the legal and the sacred. The contributors approach their chapters from an array of different backgrounds and perspectives but with the common objective of investigating the mutually shaping relationship of religion and law. The collaborative endeavour that this volume offers makes available substantial knowledge on the question of international law and religion.

Table of contents:

Martti Koskenniemi, “International Law and Religion: no Stable Ground”

Part I: Natural Law and Ius Gentium
Sarah Mortimer, “Law, Justice and Charity in a Divided Christendom: 1500-1625”
Pia Valenzuela, “Between Scylla and Charybdis: Aquinas’ Political Thought and his Notion of Natural Law and Ius Gentium”  Mary M. Keys, “Religion, Empire and Law Among Nations in the City of God. From the Salamanca School to Augustine, and Back Again”
Janne Nijman, “Grotius’ Imago Dei Anthropology. Grounding Ius Naturae et Gentium”
Ofir Haivri, “John Selden and the Jewish Religious Fountainhead of the International Law of the Sea”

Part II: Human Rights, Between History, The International and Religion
John Haskell, “The Religious/Secular Debate in Human Rights Literature. Constitutive Tensions between Christian, Islamic, and Secular Perspectives”
Monica García-Salmones, “Natural Rights in Albert the Great. Beyond Objective and Subjective Divides”
Pasquale Annicchino, “The Past is Never Dead. Christian Anti-internationalism and Human Rights”
Pamela Slotte, “Whose Justice? What Political Theology? On Christian and Theological Approaches to Human Rights in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries”

Part III: International Law, Religion, and Territory in the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean
Moussa Abou Ramadan, “Muslim Jurists’ Criteria for the Divisionist of the World intro Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam”
Nahed Samour, “From Imperial to Dissident. Approaches to Territory in Islamic International Law”
Reut Yael Paz, “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem. Religion, International Law and Jerusalem”

Part IV: Political Theology and International Legal Theory
Ileana M. Porras, "The Doctrine of the Providential Function of Commerce in International Law. Idealizing Trade"
Immi Tallgren, "The Faith in Humanity and International Criminal Law"
Michele Nicoletti, "Religion and Empire. Carl Schmitt's Katechon between International Relations and the Philosophy of History"
Elena Paris, "International Law-making and Metaphysical Foundations of Universality. Retrieving an Alternative Metaphysics"
Paul W. Kahn, "The Law of Nations and the Origin of American Law"
Paolo Amorosa, "Messianic Visions of the United States. International Law, Religion and the Cuban Intervention, 1898-1917"

On the editors:

Edited by Martti Koskenniemi, Academy Professor, University of Helsinki, Mónica García-Salmones Rovira, Post-doc Fellow, University of Helsinki, and Paolo Amorosa, Doctoral Candidate, University of Helsinki
Martti Koskenniemi is Academy Professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki and Director of the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights. He was a member of the Finnish diplomatic service in 1978-1994 and of the International Law Commission (UN) in 2002-2006. He has held visiting professorships in, among other places, New York University, Columbia University, University of Cambridge, London School of Economics, and Universities of Brussels, Melbourne, Paris, Sao Paulo and Utrecht. He is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and has a doctorate h.c. from the Universities of Uppsala, Frankfurt and McGill.
Mónica García-Salmones is adjunct Professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki and a Post-doctoral Fellow at the research project History of International Law: between Religion and Empire. She has published a monograph on the history of international legal positivism. More recently her research has focused in the early history of international law, with a focus in the study of the conceptual, philosophical and historical continuities between the moderns and previous theological theories
Paolo Amorosa is a doctoral candidate and a member of the research project 'Intellectual History of International Law: Religion and Empire' at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, University of Helsinki. Prior to that, he has been teaching international law and human rights at Tallinn Law School, Tallinn University of Technology. He received his LLM degree in Public International Law from Leiden University and worked as a research assistant at the Grotius Center for International Legal Studies and at the Italian Embassy to the Holy See. His recent work has focused on international legal thought in the United States in the early 20th century.

More information with Oxford University Press.