(image source: Brill)
The Papal Bulls Dividing the Americas between Spain and Portugal: A Reappraisal (Kent McNeil)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10114
Abstract:
The papacy recently repudiated the doctrine of discovery that was relied upon by European nations when they colonized lands inhabited by Indigenous peoples. However, the Vatican did not repeal the papal bulls that authorized and provided canon law support for colonization of West Africa and the Americas by Portugal and Spain. This article examines these bulls and questions the Pope’s legal authority to issue them. It contends that the bulls bound only the Christian monarchs who accepted the Pope’s authority in this regard. They had no legal force insofar as the Indigenous peoples were concerned. Moreover, the historical record reveals that other colonizing European powers, such as France and England, rejected the validity of the bulls. In fact, Spain and Portugal acquired their overseas empires in the fifteen and sixteenth centuries, not by means of discovery or papal bulls, but by subduing Indigenous peoples and forcibly occupying their territories.
Law Wars: Academia and the Manufacture of International Humanitarian Law (Page Wilson)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10115
Abstract:
Despite the emergence of much critical discourse on the conventional history of international humanitarian law (IHL) over the last decades, the way in which this conventional history is told and re-told remains virtually unaltered in one key area of dissemination: teaching materials. By conducting an in-depth examination of these materials, this article uncovers the techniques used over time to generate and perpetuate the conventional IHL history. In so doing, it helps to explain how and why the conventional IHL history continues largely unchanged in textbooks to this day.
Taming the Leviathan? The Reason of State in International Law (Valentina Vadi)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10111
Abstract:
In humanist political theory, the reason of state mostly described a course of action that did not follow the usual criteria of law but rather what was useful. Nonetheless, a broader understanding of the reason of state focused on the community’s core values. Such common interests (ius status or ragion di stato) could be contrasted with, and balanced against, those of the international community (ius gentium or ragione delle genti). According to the latter view, the reason of state did not abolish the rule of law. Rather, it indicated state governance to preserve public safety (conservare lo stato). The article investigates how Alberico Gentili (1552–1608), a religious refugee and Regius Professor at the University of Oxford, transplanted the reason of state from political theory into the law of nations while subjecting it to natural law (ius naturalis), which can be compared to the contemporary notion of jus cogens.
Book reviews
- Reckoning with Empire: Self-Determination in International Law, written by Miriam Bak McKenna (Kalana Senaratne)
- East Asians in the League of Nations: Actors, Empires and Regions in Early Global Politics, edited by Christopher R. Hughes and Hatsue Shinohara (Hirofumi Oguri)
Read more here.
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