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18 April 2024

JOURNAL: Journal of the History of International Law/Revue d'histoire du droit international XXV (2023), 3 (Oct)

 

(image source: Brill)

Spotlight Interview 2022: Annabel Brett, Use, War, and Commercial Society. Changing Paradigms of Human Relations with Animals in the Early Modern Law of Nature and of Nations (JHIL 1/2022) (Raphael Schäfer & Maren Körsmeier) [OPEN ACCESS]
DOI 10.1163/15718050-12340222
Abstract:

JHIL’s editorial board chose as its 2022 Spotlight, the article ‘Use, War, and Commercial Society. Changing Paradigms of Human Relations with Animals in the Early Modern Law of Nature and of Nations’ by Annabel Brett (Journal of the History of International Law 24(1) (2022), 1–35). In the following interview, we take a closer look at the article ‘under the spotlight’, the motivations of its author and the research carried out. The interview was conducted by the managing editor of the JHIL, Raphael Schäfer, and JHIL’s student assistant, Maren Körsmeier.

The Historical School and German International Legal Thought in the 19th Century (Jochen von Bernstorff & Max Mayer)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10088
Abstract:

This article traces the influence of the German Historical School of Law around Friedrich Carl von Savigny has had on various fundamental concepts of international law during the 19th and into the beginning of the 20th century in a detailed manner. During this time, the Historical School’s radical reformulation of the notion of law as a peoples’ spiritual essence unfolding through its habitual social action allowed 19th century scholars to redefine international law as customary law and, together with notably Hegelian teleological thought, laid conceptual groundwork for the integration of themes of European cultural superiority into the doctrines and philosophy of international law. Its conceptual legacy can further be traced in the later German positivism à la Jellinek or Oppenheim with its theories on ‘common civilised consent’ as foundation of international law.

Past and Present? Greece in International Arbitration in the Twentieth Century (Despina-Georgia Konstantinakou)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10087
Abstract:

During the twentieth century, international arbitration became an integral part of interstate dispute resolution. Greece, a small state with no particular influence, also rushed to utilize arbitration to pursue its interests, resolve intense disputes and ultimately stabilize its position in the international system. This article will discuss if and how lower-level settlement procedures can impact smaller countries’ higher political strategy, exploring Greece’s recourse before the Mixed Arbitral Tribunals, the League of Nations and the Permanent Court of International Justice. Athens’ efforts to pursue its citizens’ war claims against West Germany after World War II will be examined, along with the role international arbitration could potentially play today in resolving Greece’s war claims against the Federal Republic of Germany, which Athens raised immediately after the 1990 reunification and continue to encumber bilateral relations. Ultimately, Greece’s experience will exemplify the direct impact arbitration procedures can have on international relations.
Tears of the Olive Trees: Mandatory Palestine, the UK, and Reparations for Colonialism in International Law (Ralph Wilde)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-12340216
Abstract:

The Palestinian people seek a reckoning for the failure of the UK to enable their self- determination during the League of Nations Mandate period and in 1948. The common view of international lawyers is that the law of self-determination only became applicable to colonial peoples in the second half of the 20th Century. Consequently, the UK, and the League Council, had a free hand on the question of the status of the Palestine Mandate. This is mistaken. The special clause of the League Covenant applicable to Palestine, providing for provisional independence, could not be lawfully bypassed. The UK’s failure to comply with this was a violation of international law with ongoing consequences, thereby serving as a basis for contemporary accountability. This case study reveals the existence and potential of legal avenues for colonial reparations rooted in not generally-applicable legal norms but sui generis rules specific to the case at hand.

Writing a Transnational (Global?) History of Extradition Law in the Short Twentieth Century: Beyond Western-Centric Approaches (Pablo del Hierro & Lucas Lixinski)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10082
Abstract:

The article examines the history of extradition in the twentieth century, to call for a broader engagement with extradition law not only as an under-explored chapter in international law in its own right, but also as a pathway to think more deeply about world-ruling projects. Extradition law, normally thought of as primarily bilateral, in fact has a long and rich history of multilateral engagement. This tension between multilateralism and bilateralism, we argue, showcases the role of technique to hide political projects in international law-making, as well as showcasing the need to include more non-Eurocentric voices in our narratives about the design of international law instruments and institutions. European nations in the period we survey were more invested in bilateral efforts, claiming the impossibility of multilateral treaty-making in extradition law; yet, Latin American states successfully undertook multiple initiatives in this realm, which are often excluded from mainstream narratives, at the cost of buying into a biased narrative of bilateral treaties that neglects how extradition law has been used to shape and hide key political tensions. In light of these findings, the article puts forth a research agenda that takes extradition more seriously into our accounts of the evolution of international law.

Book review
L’ordre des circulations. L’Institut de Droit international et la régulation des migrations (1870–1920), written by Philippe Rygiel (Vincent Genin)

Read the issue here.

 

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