It has never been more important to understand how international law enables and constrains international politics. By drawing together the legal theory of Lon Fuller and the insights of constructivist international relations scholars, this book articulates a pragmatic view of how international obligation is created and maintained. First, legal norms can only arise in the context of social norms based on shared understandings. Second, internal features of law, or 'criteria of legality', are crucial to law's ability to promote adherence, to inspire 'fidelity'. Third, legal norms are built, maintained or destroyed through a continuing practice of legality. Through case studies of the climate change regime, the anti-torture norm, and the prohibition on the use of force, it is shown that these three elements produce a distinctive legal legitimacy and a sense of commitment among those to whom law is addressed.

There has been intense debate in recent times over the legitimacy or otherwise of international law. This book contains fresh perspectives on these questions, offered at an international and interdisciplinary conference hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Law and International Law. At issue are questions including, for example, whether international law lacks legitimacy in general and whether international law or a part of it has yielded to the facts of power.

"Legality and legitimacy in global affairs edited by Richard Falk, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Vesselin Popovski, brings together analyses of controversial events in international politics from top experts in field ; combines approaches to involvement between nations from across the social science disciplines ; approaches contemporary international relations from a philosophical, ethical, and legal standpoint" --

This book addresses critical questions about how legal development works in practice. Can law be employed to shape behavior as a form of social engineering, or must social behavior change first, relegating legal change to follow as ratification or reinforcement? And what is legal development's source of legitimacy if not modernization? But by the same token, whose version of modernization will predominate absent a Western monopoly on change? There are now legal development alternatives, especially from Asia, so we need a better way to ask the right questions of different approaches primarily in (non-Western) Asia, Africa, the Islamic world, plus South America. Incoming waves of change like the 'Arab spring' lie on the horizon. Meanwhile, debates are sharpening about law's role in economic development versus democracy and governance under the rubric of the rule of law. More than a general survey of law and modernization theory and practice, this work is a timely reference for practitioners of institutional reform, and a thought-provoking interdisciplinary collection of essays in an area of renewed practical and scholarly interest. The contributors are a distinguished international group of scholars and practitioners of law, development, social sciences, and religion with extensive experience in the developing world.

The obligations stemming from international law are still predominantly considered, despite important normative and descriptive critiques, as being 'based' on (State) consent. To that extent, international law differs from domestic law where consent to the law has long been considered irrelevant to law-making, whether as a criterion of validity or as a ground of legitimacy. In addition to a renewed historical and philosophical interest in (State) consent to international law, including from a democratic theory perspective, the issue has also recently regained in importance in practice. Various specialists of international law and the philosophy of international law have been invited to explore the different questions this raises in what is the first edited volume on consent to international law in English language. The collection addresses three groups of issues: the notions and roles of consent in contemporary international law; its objects and types; and its subjects and institutions.

The past sixty years have seen an expansion of international human rights conventions and supervisory organs, not least in Europe. While these international legal instruments have enlarged their mandate, they have also faced opposition and criticism from political actors at the state level, even in well-functioning democracies. Against the backdrop of such contestations, this book brings together prominent scholars in law, political philosophy and international relations in order to address the legitimacy of international human rights regimes as a theoretically challenging and politically salient case of international authority. It provides a unique and thorough overview of the legitimacy problems involved in the global governance of human rights.

This book examines the way international criminal courts and tribunals have interpreted the crimes against humanity proscription of other inhumane acts. This clause is consistently used in spite of the long list of more specific offences forbidden as crimes against humanity. The volume proposes that the current approach is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the clause. Properly understood, the clause is an invitation to courts to create and apply retroactive criminal laws. This leads to a problem. A prohibition on the use of retroactive criminal laws, one which admits no exceptions, is deeply embedded in international law. The author argues that it is time to revisit the assumption that retroactive criminal laws can never be deployed in a fair legal system. Drawing lessons from an exploration on the way the prohibition on retroactive laws is applied in practice, she proposes a new framework for understanding the clause proscribing the commission of other inhumane acts. This book will be of relevance to anyone interested in international criminal law or criminal law theory. Gillian MacNeil is Assistant Professor at Robson Hall, the Faculty of Law of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada.

Framed by critical globalisation theory and David Harvey’s ‘co-revolutionary moments’ as a theory of social change, this book brings together a multi-disciplinary team of researchers to empirically analyse how socialism is being constructed in contemporary Latin America and the Caribbean, and beyond. This book uses the case of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America - Peoples’ Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP) to invite to a re-thinking of resistance to global capitalism and the construction of socialism in the 21st century. Including detailed theory-based ethnographic case studies from Bolivia, Cuba, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Venezuela and the USA, the contributors identify social and structural forces at different levels and scales to illuminate politics and practices at work. Centred around the themes of democracy and justice, and the more general reconfiguration of the state-society relations and power geometries at the local, national, regional and global scales, ALBA and Counter-Globalization is at the forefront in the trend of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of social phenomena of global relevance. Counter-Globalization and Socialism in the 21st Century will be of interest to students and scholars of Latin American politics, global governance, global regionalisms and rising powers.

The first essay of this volume is written by Hans van Loon, who was the Secretary-General of The Hague Conference of Private International Law (HCCH) from 30 June 1996 to 30 June 2013, and who steered the Conference during a time of global expansion and transformation. He has been a forerunner in the formulation of modern private international law through multilateral treaties and was involved in the development of nine Hague Conventions, as well as the revision of the Statute of the Hague Conference. The continued relevance of the Hague Conference in the 21st century is in large part due to his commitment to the field of private international law and his awareness of its role in a broader social context. In recent years, private international law has become intertwined with public international law. Van Loon's essay on "At the Cross-Roads of Public and Private International Law - The Hague Conference on Private International [and its Work]" evidences that the system of modern international law is inseparable from private international law. One of the most highly qualified figures in international marine environment law is Prof. Bimal N. Patel, Director and Professor of Public International Law, Gujarat National Law University in India. The protection and preservation of the marine environment has been the subject of global and regional cooperation within the framework of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and other multilateral treaties thereof. Prof. Patel's essay on "Marine Environment Law and Practice of China, India, Japan and Korea" provides a timely study of the material sources of international marine environmental law. Prof. Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann has been a pioneer in formulating the material part of international economic law in each of its developmental stage. His essays display remarkable intellectual vitality, illustrating his new initiatives in the subject of international economic law. He was first invited to lecture at the Xiamen summer programme in 2006, on "New Dimensions of International Economic Law", and he was again invited to deliver a lecture on "Methodological Problems in International Trade, Investment and Health Law and Adjudication" at the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the establishment of Xiamen Academy in 2015. With his practical experience with the World Trade Organization (WTO), and teaching and research at the European University Institute in Florence, Prof. Petersmann has not only promoted and illuminated public international economic law, he is also one of a group of highly qualified scholars who have been writing and collaborating with others in order to lay the foundation of modern international economic law.