Wentker: Neutrality in International Legal Thought

Alexander Wentker (Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law) has posted Neutrality in International Legal Thought (in Research Handbook on International Legal Theory and War, Tom Dannenbaum & Eliav Lieblich eds., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

This chapter discusses the key debates surrounding neutrality that international legal thought has had to grapple with. It shows how international legal thought has made sense of an institution that has been shaped by States’ pragmatic mindset in developing and invoking it. The chapter analyses how scholarship has positioned and continuously re-positioned neutrality within a dramatically changing international order in which neutrality has proved stubbornly resilient. In doing so, the chapter demonstrates that, however marginal neutrality’s relevance to current international law may appear at first sight, theoretical reflection on neutrality helps in better grasping the current international legal regulation of war as a whole, and even structural developments in general international law beyond war.