The Battle for International Law: South-North Perspectives on the Decolonization Era

by Jochen von Bernstorff, Philipp Dann

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198849636
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/24/2019
Series:	The History and Theory of International Law
Pages:	488
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 6.40(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Jochen von Bernstorff is currently the Dean of the Tubingen Law Faculty (since 2018), holds the Chair for Constitutional law, International Law and Human Rights (since 2011), and has taught international law as a visiting professor at the German Federal Foreign Office Academy Berlin, Universite Pantheon-Assas (institut des hautes etudes internationales), Universite Aix-Marseille and National Taiwan University Taipei. He has acted as a consultant for the German Government and various UN-institutions on human rights, development and international environmental law issues.

Philipp Dann holds the Chair of Public and Comparative Law at Humboldt University Berlin (since 2014) and is principal investigator in the Cluster of Excellence 'Contestations of the Liberal Script' (since 2019). He holds degrees from Frankfurt University (PhD and post-doctoral Habilitation) and Harvard Law School (LL.M.) and has taught German, European and public international law in Germany, France, India, Kenya, the Sudan and the US.

Table of Contents

IntroductionThe Battle for International Law: A Sketch, Jochen von Bernstorff and Philipp DannPart I: Sites of BattleA. Concepts - Kampfbegriffe1. The Common Heritage of Mankind: Annotations on a Battle, Surabhi Ranganathan2. The Battle for the Recognition of Wars of National Liberation, Jochen von Bernstorff3. The Developmental State: Independence, Dependency and the History of the South, Luis Eslava4. Colonial Fragments: Decolonisation, Concessions and Acquired Rights, Matthew Craven5. Acquired Rights and State Succession - The Rise and Fall of the Third World in the International Law Commission, Anna Brunner6. Rival Worlds and the Place of the Corporation in International law, Subhya Pahuja and Anna Saunders7. The Battle Continues: Rebuilding Empire through Internationalization of State Contracts, Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah8. (De)colonizing Human Rights, Florian Hoffmann and Bethania Assy9. Picking Battles: Race, Decolonization, and Apartheid, Rotem GiladiB. Institutions10. The International Court of Justice During the Battle for International Law (1955-1975)-Colonial Imprints and Possibilities for Change, Ingo Venzke11. The Battle and the United Nations, Guy Sinclair12. The World Bank in the Battles of the 'Decolonization Era', Philipp DannPart II Individual Protagonists and Regional PerspectivesA. Individual Protagonists13. Reading R.P. Anand in the Postcolony: Between Resistance and Appropriation, Prabhakar Singh14. Taslim Olawale Elias: From British Colonial Law to Modern International Law, Carl Landauer15. Determining New Selves: Mohammed Bedjaoui on Algeria, Western Sahara, and Post-Classical International Law, Umut Ozsu16. Charles Chaumont's Third World International Legal Theory, Emamanuelle Tourme JouannetB. Regional Perspectives17. Literal 'Decolonisation': Re-reading African International Legal Scholarship through the African Novel, Christopher Gevers18. The Soviets and the Right to Self-Determination of the Colonized: Contradictions of Soviet Diplomacy and Foreign Policy in the Era of Decolonization, Bill Bowring19. The Failed Battle for Self-Determination: The United States and the Postwar Illusion of Enlightened Colonialism, 1945-1975, Olivier BarsalouEpilogueWhat's Law Got to Do with it? Recollections, Impressions, Martti Koskenniemi

Editorial Reviews

"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

From the Publisher