Francisco Suárez S.J. on the End of Peaceful Order among States and Systematic Doctrinal Scholarship

Author(s):  
Tobias Schaffner

This chapter argues that the work of Suárez, like that of other theologians and natural lawyers, offers an insightful (albeit imperfect) articulation of the values of peace and justice which continue to underpin the international legal order. Suárez reminds us that the practical reasoning of all upright statesmen, citizens, and lawyers is guided by the idea of a peaceful and just order among states. Peace and justice are potentialities which individuals and whole nations can establish and preserve, as well as fail to establish or preserve, through their co-ordinated actions. His work remains insightful precisely because most of today’s accounts of international law neglect the role of peace and justice as a starting point of legal reasoning, a goal of state action, and even a source of international law.

2006 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 272-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dusko Dimitrijevic

In this study the author attaches a great importance to the theoretical examination of the concept of the New International Legal Order that was embodied in the last decades of the 20th century. The starting point for that reflection is the dissolution of the SFR Yugoslavia that illustrates one of the fundamental legal precedents. Reminding that the basic principle for the post-modern State behavior must be the one that includes minimal disturbance of the existing international legal relations, the author stresses that "the Yugoslav case" was customized in the way to respond to the new reality where the principle of effectiveness played an essential role in valuation of the statehood. It could also be one of the greatest catalysts for all further 'development rules' of international law.


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-104
Author(s):  
Shruti Rana

Abstract The Covid-19 pandemic and related shutdowns created seismic shifts in the boundaries between public and private life, with lasting implications for human rights and international law. Arriving just as the international legal order was wobbling in the wake of a populist backlash and other great challenges, the pandemic intensified fault lines of marginalisation and state action, amplifying the forces that had already left the liberal international order in crisis and retreat. This article examines the pandemic’s impacts on the international legal order through a gendered lens. It argues that in the short-term, the pandemic has reinforced public-private divides in international law, reinvigorating previous debates over the role of the state in protecting its people from harm. It argues that in the long-term, these developments threaten to unravel the most recent gains in international law and global governance that have supported and expanded the recognition of human rights to marginalised groups. Left unaddressed, this unraveling will further entrench such divides and contribute to the further retreat of the liberal international order. Examining these fault lines and their implications can help us re-imagine a post-pandemic international legal order that offers more protection for human rights, even as multilateral institutions and cooperation sputter or fail.


Author(s):  
Astrid Kjeldgaard-Pedersen

Chapter 2 identifies and explains the four theoretical conceptions of international legal personality, which will be tested against historical and existing norms of positive international law in Chapters 3–8. With particular focus on the role attributed to the individual as the ultimate subject of international law, the examination will concentrate on selected scholars’ conclusions on the criteria for, and the consequences of acquiring, international legal personality. Moreover, it will address the way in which proponents of the various conceptions perceive the relationship between the international legal order and national legal order(s) and the role of the concept of international legal personality in that regard. Given that a primary aim of the book is to ascertain the position of the individual as a matter of international lex lata, particular attention is given to the two main conceptions of international legal personality, which both claim to be positivist.


2018 ◽  
Vol 87 (4) ◽  
pp. 436-465
Author(s):  
Alexis Galán

Legitimacy has become a central concern in international law. This article analyses an important aspect of the concept, namely the often-presumed link between legitimacy and the stability of institutions and norms. The explanatory role of legitimacy hinges on the descriptive elements attributed to legitimacy because, only by fixing those elements, a causal link can be established. The article contends that due to its conceptual features legitimacy cannot be circumscribed descriptively, making the tracing of its relationship to the stability of institutions and norms in the international legal order an intractable task. The article suggests that international lawyers should embrace the open-ended nature of legitimacy and focus on its dynamic dimension: legitimation. Legitimacy is treated as a rhetorical tool whereby actors try to pursue certain courses of action. The importance of legitimacy then lies in its employment for the shaping of perceptions with regard to how institutions ought to be.


Author(s):  
I. Zabara

The article deals with the theoretical aspects of the key issues of international legal order. The author describes the phenomenon of international legal order based on conceptual views of representatives of modern Ukrainian school of international law. The author examines and summarizes the international legal doctrinal views which define and determine the formation of modern international legal order. The author identifies several fundamental areas of international legal order. The first line shows the sectoral focus of research. The author notes that in this line of questions explored the legal basis of international legal order in certain areas of international law; conceptual aspects of formation of international legal order in a particular area of international law; the relationship between the principles of international law and the principles of international legal order; the role of international law and its subjects in the development of international law in certain areas. Within this framework have been identified and studied the principles of international legal order in the spatial (space, sea) branches of international law, and in some areas the actual activities of international law. The second trend reflects the regional focus of research of international legal order. The author notes that within the area studied questions of general principles of formation and development of regional order; especially the formation and development of some regional order; regional impact of law enforcement on the national transformation of individual states. Within this framework singled out themes, covering the European legal order, Asian international legal order, African legal order, American legal order and other types of international legal order.


Author(s):  
Anastasiia O. Perfilieva ◽  

The article is devoted to the peculiarities of the formation of the international legal order in the process of evolution of international law. The development of international law is directly determined by the specifics of civilizational development and changes that occur in the international environment under the influence of globalization and regionalization. Globalization and regionalization are manifested respectively in the processes of unification and fragmentation of international law, becoming the content of the specifics of the processes in international legal relations at the current stage. The analysis of modern international legal relations, formed as a result of the principles and norms of international law in the context of globalization and regionalization, gives grounds to identify the manifestations of localization in international legal relations as a model of fragmentation of international law. The concept of fragmentation enters the science of international law at the beginning of the XXI century. Thanks to the discourse initiated by the UN Commission on International Law and is gradually gaining paradigmatic significance. Paradigmatic transformations of the science of international law are inevitable in the conditions of intensive development of international legal relations and provide further progress of science. The starting point of this process was the rejection of the unequivocally negativism interpretation of fragmentation as the opposite of integration and unification, which contradicts globalization. Therefore, today, in addition to the widely developed general international treaty and legal unification of domestic law, its regional unification is becoming more and more developed. Regional unification is also international, but it has a regional aspect, primarily related to the level of regional interstate integration. Integration practices are reflected in the relevant international treaties, especially those governing the establishment and operation of regional international associations. These associations are the organizational and legal shell for the development of regional international legal unification processes. Regionalization of international law, as well as its fragmentation in treatyformed international regions, is associated with the level and depth of relevant regional integration, which is a priority for states, and international law provides integration processes as a necessary tool for their regulation. Fragmentation is a natural process in the evolution of international law and is seen as a factor in the creation of modern international law. The international legal order has a contractual nature and a complex multicomponent structure. The process of forming the structure of the international legal order on the basis of a complex intertwining of uneven processes of regionalization and fragmentation is not yet complete. In the doctrine of international law, the complexity of the international legal order is determined from the standpoint of the number of elements and components, as well as their number and the relationship between them and the environment in which the legal order exists. It is obvious that the current stage of civilizational development is characterized by complexity and multidimensionality, which are reflected in the practices of creating a new international legal order based on the changes taking place in international legal relations. Therefore, fragmentation as a factor in the development of international legal relations becomes a factor in the formation of modern international legal order and determines its features.


2001 ◽  
Vol 70 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 121-160 ◽  
Author(s):  

AbstractAgainst the background of NATO's war over Kosovo in 1999, this article deals with legal and legal-political aspects of humanitarian intervention without authorisation from the UN Security Council – an issue elucidating the foundations of international law and the role of state practice in its dynamic development. It is argued that unauthorised humanitarian intervention has no legal basis in current international law: It is incompatible with Article 2(4) of the Charter, the defence of a state of necessity is not applicable and no doctrine of unauthorised humanitarian intervention has been established under customary international law. From a legal-political perspective, the crucial question is whether to develop a doctrine of humanitarian intervention without the Security Council if necessary, or stick to the existing legal order, maintaining the Security Council as the sole authoritative organ for decision-making on humanitarian intervention, while working to make it more effective. The author favours the latter alternative. However, in the short term, an ad hoc ``emergency exit'' may be needed. The special circumstances precluding wrongfulness, such as state necessity, it is argued, are not a conceptually suitable framework for justifying humanitarian intervention. But unauthorised humanitarian intervention could be undertaken ad hoc, as a deviation from international law justified solely on moral grounds. This leaves open an option for intervention in extreme cases of human suffering, but at the same time avoids jeopardising the existing, hard-earned, international legal order and the central role of the Security Council. NATO's war over Kosovo, it is argued, was such a case of ad hoc intervention on moral grounds. The article assesses the legal-political consequences of this approach in the aftermath of NATO's bombing campaign.


2014 ◽  
pp. 13-31
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Grzelak-Bach

Following a brief introduction of article 6 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the author begins by analyzing case law from the European Court of Human Rights regarding the legal reasoning in judicial proceedings. The main premise of this paper is to present a formula for preparing legal reasoning in administrative court proceedings. The author draws attention to the role of judges who, in the process of adjudication, should apply creative interpretation of the rules of law, when they see errors or omissions in legislative provisions, or blatant violations of the European legal order. The conclusion of those deliberations finds, that the process of tailoring the approach to meet Strasbourg’s requirements should, on a basic level, be at the discretion of judges rather than the legislators.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas S. Eder

China aims to become a “leader country” in international law that “guides” the international legal order. Delivering the first comprehensive analysis of case law and Chinese academic debates from 2002 to 2018, this book shows that gradually increased engagement with international adjudication is part of a broad effort to consolidate China’s economic and political gains, and regain great power status. It covers trade, investment, territorial and law of the sea matters – including the South China Sea disputes – and delineates a decades-long process between caution and ambition. Both in debate patterns and in actual engagement, this book finds remarkable similarities in all covered fields of law, merely the timetables differ.


AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 81-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Bianchi

My very first publication, admittedly written in a language that many AJIL Unbound readers might be unable or unwilling to read, was an essay on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and its effects vis-à-vis third parties. Already back then, I found it difficult to justify how an international treaty could rubber-stamp such a highly uneven state of affairs. The overt acknowledgement of the discrimination between nuclear and nonnuclear states, the hypocrisy about “unofficial” nuclear states, and the Article VI obligation for nuclear states to negotiate effective measures of disarmament, largely ignored in the first twenty years of the treaty, were all elements that contributed to my perception of unfairness, if not blatant injustice. As a young researcher approaching international law with the enthusiasm of the neophyte, however, this looked like a little anomaly in an otherwise fair and equitable international legal order. It did not set off warning bells about the system as such. After all, international law was geared, at least in my eyes, towards enhancing the wellbeing of humanity. It must have been so. And it is not that I leaned particularly on the idealistic side; it seemed normal to me … at the time.


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