This tribute to Professor Detlev Vagts of the Harvard Law School brings together his colleagues at Harvard and the American Society of International Law, as well as academics, judges and practitioners, many of them his former students. Their essays span the entire spectrum of modern transnational law: international law in general; transnational economic law; and transnational lawyering and dispute resolution. The contributors evaluate established fields of transnational law, such as the protection of property and investment, and explore new areas of law which are in the process of detaching themselves from the nation-state such as global administrative law and the regulation of cross-border lawyering. The implications of decentralised norm-making, the proliferation of dispute settlement mechanisms and the rising backlash against global legal interdependence in the form of demands for preserving state legal autonomy are also examined.

This tribute to Professor Detlev Vagts of the Harvard Law School brings together his colleagues at Harvard and the American Society of International Law, as well as academics, judges and practitioners, many of them his former students. Their essays span the entire spectrum of modern transnational law: international law in general; transnational economic law; and transnational lawyering and dispute resolution. The contributors evaluate established fields of transnational law, such as the protection of property and investment, and explore new areas of law which are in the process of detaching themselves from the nation-state such as global administrative law and the regulation of cross-border lawyering. The implications of decentralised norm-making, the proliferation of dispute settlement mechanisms and the rising backlash against global legal interdependence in the form of demands for preserving state legal autonomy are also examined.

Poverty, inequality, and dispossession accompany economic globalization. Bringing together three international law scholars, this book addresses how international law and its regimes of trade, investment, finance, as well as human rights, are implicated in the construction of misery, and how international law is producing, reproducing, and embedding injustice and narrowing the alternatives that might really serve humanity. Adopting a pluralist approach, the authors confront the unconscionable dimensions of the global economic order, the false premises upon which they are built, and the role of international law in constituting and sustaining them. Combining insights from radical critiques, political philosophy, history, and critical development studies, the book explores the pathologies at work in international economic law today. International law must abide by the requirements of justice if it is to make a call for compliance with it, but this work claims it drastically fails do so. In a legal order structured around neoliberal ideologies rather than principles of justice, every state can and does grab what it can in the economic sphere on the basis of power and interest, legally so and under colour of law. This book examines how international law on trade and foreign investment and the law and norms on global finance has been shaped to benefit the rich and powerful at the expense of others. It studies how a set of principles, in the form of a New International Economic Order (NIEO), that could have laid the groundwork for a more inclusive international law without even disrupting its market-orientation, were nonetheless undermined. As for international human rights law, it is under the terms of global capitalism that human rights operate. Before we can understand how human rights can create more just societies, we must first expose the ways in which they reflect capitalist society and how they assist in reproducing the underlying terms of immiseration that will continue to create the need for human rights protection. This book challenges conventional justifications of economic globalization and eschews false choices. It is not about whether one is "for" or "against" international trade, foreign investment, or global finance. The issue is to resolve how, if we are to engage in trade, investment, and finance, we do so in a manner that is accountable to persons whose lives are affected by international law. The deployment of human rights for their part must be considered against the ubiquity of neoliberal globalization under law, and not merely as a discrete, benevolent response to it.

The book explores the main characteristics of contemporary theory in international law. It examines in an analytical fashion 32 schools, movements, and trends as well as the works of more than 500 authors on substantive issues of international law.

This book brings together critical legal analyses of ongoing global issues in the digital age by international lawyers in Asia. Digital revolution is the key to understanding the contemporary human society. In this book, the authors critically redefine the mainstream thinking and ideas of contemporary international legal issues that the global community is facing. Given the rapidly shifting global legal landscape and framework, they shed light on the theoretical and practical questions in international law and reexamine their global context. Such independent and forward-looking approach suggests the ideas to shaping the global common good in the future human society. In both theory and practice, this book is a useful guide to Asian law, politics, economy, and business providing a fair and balanced point of view.

Analysing international law through the prism of “cynicism” makes it possible to look beyond overt disregard for international law, currently discussed in terms of a backlash or crisis. The concept allows to analyse and criticise structural features and specific uses of international law that seem detrimental to international law in a more subtle way. Unlike its ancient predecessor, cynicism nowadays refers not to a bold critique of power but to uses and abuses of international law that pursue one-sided interests tacitly disregarding the legal structure applied. From this point of view, the contributions critically reflect on the theoretical foundations of international law, in particular its relationship to power, actors such as the International Law Commission and international judges, and specific fields, including international human rights, humanitarian, criminal, tax and investment law.

International investment law has often been seen as an obstacle to sustainable development. While the connections between investment and development are plain, for a long time there has been relatively little scholarship exploring them. Combining critical reflection and detailed analysis, this book addresses the relationship between contemporary investment law and development. The book is organized around two competing visions of investment and development - as working either harmoniously or in conflict with one another. The expert contributors reflect on both of these views and analyse the social dimensions of development and its impact on investment law. Coverage includes in-depth discussion on such issues as human rights, poverty reduction, labor standards, and indigenous peoples. Students and scholars of international investment law will benefit from the informed analysis of the links between investment and development. This book will also be of use to practitioners and experts of development law who are looking for an up-to-date perspective of the field.

Offers a new perspective on international law and international legal argumentation: to what event is international law a belief system?

Particularly in the humanities and social sciences, festschrifts are a popular forum for discussion. The IJBF provides quick and easy general access to these important resources for scholars and students. The festschrifts are located in state and regional libraries and their bibliographic details are recorded. Since 1983, more than 639,000 articles from more than 29,500 festschrifts, published between 1977 and 2010, have been catalogued.

The question of the sources of international law inevitably raises some well-known scholarly controversies: where do the rules of international law come from? And more precisely: through which processes are they made, how are they ascertained, and where does the international legal order begin and end? This is the static question of the pedigree of international legal rules and the boundaries of the international legal order. Second, what are the processes through which these rules are made? This is the dynamic question of the making of these rules and of the exercise of public authority in international law. The Oxford Handbook of the Sources of International Law is the very first comprehensive work of its kind devoted to the question of the sources of international law. It provides an accessible and systematic overview of the key issues and debates around the sources of international law. It also offers an authoritative theoretical guide for anyone studying or working within but also outside international law wishing to understand one of its most foundational questions. This Handbook features original essays by leading international law scholars and theorists from a range of traditions, nationalities and perspectives, reflecting the richness and diversity of scholarship in this area.