The Unseen History of International Law locates and describes almost one thousand surviving copies of the first nine editions of Hugo Grotius' De iure belli ac pacis (IBP) published between 1625 and 1650. Meticulously reconstructing the publishing history of these first nine editions and cataloguing copies across hundreds of collections,The Unseen History provides fundamental data for reconstructing the impact of IBP across time and space. It also examines annotations that thousands of owners and readers have left in IBP copies over four centuries, offering original insights into the development of international law.
Grotius' De iure belli ac pacis has been commonly regarded as the foundation of modern international law since its first appearance in 1625. Most major international law scholars have engaged with IBP, often owning and richly annotating their own copies. At key moments - including the demise of the Holy Roman Empire, the fall of Napoleon, and the end of both world wars - IBP was reissued with new commentaries by multinational projects devoted to restarting the international order. Despite the enormous literature on IBP's reception and influence, we cannot fully understand its impact without uncovering the history of IBP as a physical object, with hundreds of thousands of unpublished annotations arguing or agreeing with the text, updating and adapting its contents.
Approaching Grotius' seminal work as a physical vehicle of the author's, the publishers', owners', and readers' engagement, The Unseen History radically expands and revises our understanding not only of IBP, but also of the academic discipline and lived practice of modern international law over the last four centuries. In addition to delving into the first nine editions' printing history, descriptive bibliography, and both Grotius' and the publishers' marketing and donation strategies, the book explores Grotius' subsequent impact on pro-slavery and abolitionist litigation as a case study of how the census' original findings can be applied to specific areas of reception.
This comprehensive book examines the history and importance of three fundamental ideas underlying the concept of statehood: effectiveness, recognition and legitimacy. It explores the analytical and historical genesis of these concepts, as well as their practical application in navigating relationships between states.
Alexander Orakhelashvili examines the theoretical developments and state and judicial practices relating to the key concepts of effectiveness, recognition and legitimacy. Through detailed case studies, he explores the history of the ideas that inform the contemporary discourse on statehood in international law. Presenting a range of diverse and divergent views, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the modern concept of statehood and how this has come into fruition.
This essay explores China’s approach to global order. China’s remarkable rise has coincided with increasing engagement with the institutions of global governance. These institutions—in particular the United Nations—make up the core of what U.S. leaders have often referred to as the liberal world order or the rules-based order. Many U.S. officials see China as a deep threat intent on challenging, and perhaps even seeking to replace, this rules-based order. This essay, however, makes the case that China’s near-term goals for global governance appear more modest. Much of China’s behavior within institutions such as the UN suggests that what it seeks today is less a recasting of the existing order than a rebalancing and reinforcing of certain longstanding principles and features. China’s primary focus over the last decade has been to revitalize and reinforce long-standing principles of international law such as sovereignty, territorial integrity, and multilateralism while attacking the American concept of a rules-based order. Traditional concepts of sovereignty and international law provide an attractive frame to China. However, there are aspects of the international order China resists or even tries to undermine, such as the law of the sea and international human rights law. This essay explores how China’s approach to global governance has developed over the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first and examines what conclusions about the near future we may draw from this evolution.
In only three years, the international legal order suffered three shocks: Ukraine, Gaza, and Trump. These function as a looking glass that focalises pre-exiting more or less latently smouldering key challenges: north─south inequality; global warming and the mass extinction of species; and the dark side of digitalisation.
In combination, the abuse of the language of international law by Putin, the stretching of the rules of armed conflict by Israel, and the side-lining of international law by Trump risk to stall even the modest function of international as a language of international relations.A snapshot of the ongoing shift of the international legal order shows that it is not being reduced to an international law of co-existence, is not reverting to Westphalia (Eastphalia), is not becoming a concert of three (or two and a half) great powers, and is not mainly a decline of the West. Rather, the international legal order is reverting to a private law writ large; with geopolitics bending international legal principles, and with more authoritarian features. The biggest risk is closing down international law which means a loss even of its ideological function as an occasional hamstring of imperial power.
In this period of transition scholars should insist on bringing the legal perspective to bear on ongoing conflicts. They should not leave the legal turf to others, respond to the high-jacking of critical approaches by criminal leaders, combine an external with an internal critique of international law which also means renewing the international legal benchmarks. They should build bridges to practice and across the diverse methodological camps. Finally, scholars are well advised to espouse multiperspectivism in order to contribute to a grass-root universality of international law.
This will require not only rationalist reasoning but an engagement with emotions. The real “monsters” unleashed in this period of transition are the negative emotions of billions of individuals fomented and instrumentalised by socio-pathic leaders. The monsters are out of the bottle, but they can be tamed once they are better understood.
This important contribution to children's rights scholarship brings fresh eyes to the complicated relationship between domestic law and international law in the practice of domestic courts. Through a critical assessment of the judicial application of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in four jurisdictions (Australia, France, South Africa and the United Kingdom), the book demonstrates that the traditional rules of reception remain an essential starting point in understanding how national courts apply the Convention but are unable to explain all forms of judicial engagement therewith. The book shows that regardless of the legal system (monist, dualist, hybrid), courts can apply the Convention meaningfully especially when the domestic structure of reception converges with it. The comparative international law perspective used in the book and the heterogenous sample of jurisdictions analysed enabled the author to distil insights valid for other jurisdictions.
The first comprehensive analysis of domestic and international law defining and prohibiting torture and other forms of ill-treatment, this groundbreaking work reviews the law on torture in countries around the world. It considers how international law governs the use of force by police against suspects held in custody and during protests, and the practice and outlawing of torture both in peacetime and during armed conflict. The analysis also includes the application of universal jurisdiction, which is used in the attempt to prosecute and punish torture committed anywhere in the world. The application and execution of the death penalty are also discussed in detail.
The cornerstone of the World Court's identity is its resolution of inter-state disputes. This insightful critique challenges the implication that individuals have little importance in such disputes as a result. Arguing for individuals' enhanced integration, it reveals their relevance in a myriad of disputes beyond those centred on violations of multilateral human rights treaties and unveils a multitude of procedural practices with unquenched potential. It also carefully unpacks and interrogates the Court's legal reasoning in various contexts such as territorial and maritime disputes, amongst others. Finally, it critically analyses and evaluates the legal and political underpinnings for the Court's approaches and state litigants' choices from a lens of social idealism. This pioneering study sheds light on the imbalance between individuals as key stakeholders in inter-state disputes and their treatment in law and practice.
The latest issue of the Virginia Journal of International Law (Vol. 65, no. 3, 2025) is out. Contents include:
This cutting-edge Research Handbook examines how investment law and policy can foster or frustrate sustainable development goals and accords. Expert authors explore opportunities for environmental, social, and economic rules to shape international investment flows, advancing global sustainability and justice.
Featuring contributions from leading professors and practitioners, the Research Handbook analyzes innovative legal procedures including sustainability impact assessment, examines new treaty provisions advancing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and considers emerging practices in dispute resolution. Chapters evaluate evolving international investment rules in light of recent law and policy changes, outlining strategies for incentivizing more sustainable development. Ultimately, they argue that international law can and should guide investment decisions which affect human rights, environmental protection and poverty eradication.
The latest issue of the International Journal of Human Rights (Vol. 29, no. 4, 2025) is out. Contents include:
Protecting civilians who have fallen into enemy hands or are just about to come under the adversary's control is a constant challenge in the application of international humanitarian law (IHL) and the law of armed conflict (LOAC). Despite many decades of scholarship, military operational practice, and advocacy, certain legal questions remain unresolved, while others have been insufficiently examined or are newly emerging due to technological, societal, and cultural developments.
Civilian Protection in Armed Conflict explores a range of longstanding, current, and new legal and practical issues in the interpretation and application of IHL/LOAC related to civilian protection. The subjects selected are based on the experiences or observations of repeated dilemmas about the extent of legal protections owed and actually extended to civilians in military operations.
These include the protection of unprivileged belligerents and civilians in the invasion phase of international armed conflict, the law underlying civilian “screening” operations, and the challenges of setting up humanitarian corridors. Responding to recent armed conflicts including in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, renewed attention is also paid to the rules governing deportation and forced conscription, and to the evolving area of civilian data protection and extraterritorial data migration. Developing interfaces between IHL/LOAC and other legal regimes, including environmental concerns, gender considerations, emerging technologies, and forensic science considerations are likewise explored. In all cases, accountability for non-respect of IHL/LOAC remains a fundamental legal obligation.
The latest issue of the Human Rights Quarterly (Vol. 47, no. 2, May 2025) is out. Contents include:
