Revolutionary Approach To International Law

This book explores the historical inter-relations between international law and revolution, with a focus on how international anti-capitalist struggle plays out through law. The book approaches the topic by analysing the meaning of revolution and what revolutionary activity might look like, before comparing this with legal activity, to assess the basic compatibility between the two. It then moves on to examine two prominent examples of revolutionary movements engaging with international law from the twentieth century; the early Soviet Union and the Third World movement in the nineteen sixties and seventies. The book proposes that the ‘form of law’, or its base logic, is rooted in capitalist social relations of private property and contract, and that therefore the law is a particularly inhospitable place to advance revolutionary breaks with established distributions of power or wealth. This does not mean that the law is irrelevant to revolutionaries, but that turning to legal means comes with tendencies towards conservative outcomes. In the light of this, the book considers the possibility of how, or whether, international law might contribute to the pursuit of a more egalitarian future. International Law and Revolution fills a significant gap in the field of international legal theory by offering a deep theoretical reflection on the meaning of the concept of revolution for the twenty-first century, and its link to the international legal system. It develops the commodity form theory of law as applied to international law, and explores the limits of law for progressive social struggle, informed by historical analysis. It will therefore appeal to students and scholars of public international law, legal history, human rights, international politics and political history.

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.

This book argues that the introduction of popular sovereignty as the basis for government in France facilitated a dramatic transformation in international law in the eighteenth century.

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.

The 1917 October Revolution and the revolutionary Mexican Constitution shook the foundations of international law. This collection revisits their legacies.

This book addresses the themes of praxis and the role of international lawyers as intellectuals and political actors engaging with questions of justice for Third World peoples. The book brings together 12 contributions from a total of 15 scholars working in the TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law) network or tradition. It includes chapters from some of the pioneering Third World jurists who have led this field since the time of decolonization, as well as prominent emerging scholars in the field. Broadly, the TWAIL orientation understands praxis as the relationship between what we say as scholars and what we do – as the inextricability of theory from lived experience. Understood in this way, praxis is central to TWAIL, as TWAIL scholars strive to reconcile international law’s promise of justice with the proliferation of injustice in the world it purports to govern. Reconciliation occurs in the realm of praxis and TWAIL scholars engage in a variety of struggles, including those for greater self-awareness, disciplinary upheaval, and institutional resistance and transformation. The rich diversity of contributions in the book engage these themes and questions through the various prisms of international institutional engagement, world trade and investment law, critical comparative law, Palestine solidarity and decolonization, judicial education, revolutionary struggle against imperial sovereignty, Muslim Marxism, Third World intellectual traditions, Global South constitutionalism, and migration. This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

International Law in the Long Nineteenth Century gathers ten studies that reflect the ever-growing variety of themes and approaches that scholars from different disciplines bring to the historiography of international law in the period.

In this important study David Armstrong examines the impact of revolutionary states on the international system. These states have always posed major problems for the achievement of world order: revolution is often accompanied by international as well as civil conflict, while revolutionary doctrines have proven to be highly disruptive of the existing structure of international politics. Dr Armstrong asks whether revolutionary states are `socialized' into adopting acceptable patterns of international behaviour or whether it is international society that is forced to change when these new states appear. He looks in detail at the French, American, and Russian revolutions and at several post-1945 revolutionary states; he also examines the relationship between revolutionary states and the principal ordering devices of international society: international law, diplomacy, and the balance of power. His book is a major contribution to international relations and an important development and application of the `international society' concept.

What is the effect of revolutions on legal systems? What role do constitutions play in legitimating regimes? How do constitutions and revolutions converge or clash? Taking the Arab Spring as its case study, this book explores the role of law and constitutions during societal upheavals, and critically evaluates the different trajectories they could follow in a revolutionary setting. The book urges a rethinking of major categories in political, legal, and constitutional theory in light of the Arab Spring. The book is a novel and comprehensive examination of the constitutional order that preceded and followed the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Jordan, Algeria, Oman, and Bahrain. It also provides the first thorough discussion of the trials of former regime officials in Egypt and Tunisia. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, including an in-depth analysis of recent court rulings in several Arab countries, the book illustrates the contradictory roles of law and constitutions. The book also contrasts the Arab Spring with other revolutionary situations and demonstrates how the Arab Spring provides a laboratory for examining scholarly ideas about revolutions, legitimacy, legality, continuity, popular sovereignty, and constituent power.