The Battle for International Law
South-North Perspectives on the Decolonization Era
Jochen von Bernstorff editor Philipp Dann editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:22nd Oct '19
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This volume provides the first comprehensive analysis of international legal debates between 1955 and 1975 related to the formal decolonization process. It is during this era, couched between classic European imperialism and a new form of US-led Western hegemony, that fundamental legal debates took place over a new international legal order for a decolonised world. The book argues that this era presents in essence a battle, a battle that was fought out in particular over the premises and principles of international law by diplomats, lawyers, and scholars. In a moment of relative weakness of European powers, 'newly independent states' and international lawyers from the South fundamentally challenged traditional Western perceptions of international legal structures engaging in fundamental controversies over a new international law. The legal outcomes of this battle have shaped the world we live in today. Contributions from a global set of authors cover contemporary debates on concepts central to the time, such as self-determination, sources and concessions, non-intervention, wars of national liberation, multinational corporations, and the law of the sea. They also discuss influential institutions, such as the United Nations, International Court of Justice, and World Bank. The volume also incorporates contemporary regional approaches to international law in the 'decolonization era' and portraits of important scholars from the Global South.
The volume is divided into two basic sections: I. Sites of Battle, and II. Individual Protagonists and Regional Perspectives. The Sites include the de-legitimation of alleged pre-independence rules; condemning metropole interventions as aggression; banning racial discrimination and using human rights as a discursive weapon; reconfiguring the world economic system; and pursuing the common heritage of mankind. The protagonists were legal scholars and institutions. * William E. Butler, Jus Gentium *
This volume provides a comprehensive analysis of international legal debates between 1955 and 1975 related to the formal decolonization process. * H. W. Micklitz, Journal of Consumer Policy *
In the present moment of heightened scepticism about the liberatory potential of both international law and formal decolonisation, the volume's critical redescription of the tactics employed by Western actors to delegitimise newly decolonised states' efforts to transform international law is highly relevant... As a whole, the volume offers a provocation to pay attention to 'how legal forms emerge and are stabilized as authoritative, and to what might be at stake in that stabilization'... Ultimately, the volume's assessment of Third World actors' varied and overlapping attacks on colonial international law, and the reaction to it, helps us understand the persistent 'oscillation between inclusion and exclusion, recognition and rejection, universalization and particularization' that characterises international law today. * Nicola Soekoe, University of the Witwatersrand, South African Journal of International Affairs *
ISBN: 9780198849636
Dimensions: 241mm x 162mm x 33mm
Weight: 898g
488 pages