1,720,981 research outputs found
‘Alberico Gentili’s Ghost’::Review of Claire Vergerio’s War, States, and International Order: Joseph Fletcher Prize Forum, Cambridge Review of International Affairs
No full text©2025, Taylor & Francis. This is an author produced version of a paper published in Cambridge Review of International Affairs uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self- archiving policy. The final published version (version of record) is available online at the link. Some minor differences between this version and the final published version may remain. We suggest you refer to the final published version should you wish to cite from it
Review of David Fraser, Nazi Antisemitism and Jewish Legal Self-Defense: The Turn to Law in Liberal Democracies, 1932–39 (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge 2024)
No full text© 2025 Taylor & Francis. This is an author produced version of a paper published in Comparative Legal History uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self- archiving policy. The final published version (version of record) is available online at the link. Some minor differences between this version and the final published version may remain. We suggest you refer to the final published version should you wish to cite from it
Negotiating Identity: Israel, Apartheid, and the United Nations, 1949–1952
Full text linkOrthodox historiographies on Israel’s early policies in ‘black’ Africa and its relations with ‘white’ South Africa commonly, if disjointedly, assert that the state’s Jewish identity had played, in the early 1960s, a key role in Israel’s participation in the international ‘struggle against apartheid’. Revisiting this assertion, I examine Israel’s involvement in early United Nations debates on South Africa’s race policies. I trace the making of Israel’s position on South Africa’s treatment of persons of Indian origins in preparation for the 1950 General Assembly; present Israel’s voting praxis in that session; and demonstrate the persistence of both position and praxis in the 1952 Assembly session where apartheid first appeared on the UN agenda. Against the grain of existing accounts, I argue first that, on Africa, Israel’s multilateral diplomacy preceded its bilateral diplomacy; Israel’s encounter with Africa began not in the early 1960s but with its 1949 UN admission, compelling its envoys to vote and reflect on African and colonial questions, including apartheid. Secondly, I demonstrate that Israel approached apartheid with equivocation; at the UN, its diplomats devised and acted on a formula allowing them, in their words, ‘to have our cake and eat it’—even if, on the whole, Israel’s diplomatic praxis was far more progressive than that of Western states. Thirdly, I demonstrate how Jewish identity, constructed through the prism of Israel’s foundational ideology, affected such equivocation: it defined Israel’s dilemma on apartheid but, at the same time, also offered a route out of that conundrum. Finally, I illustrate that the elasticity of Jewish identity displayed by Israel’s envoys drew on sensibilities that were often formed in South Africa itself by their own previous encounters with racially-managed society and, later, with apartheid
The Role of the International Committee of the Red Cross
Full text linkIn the absence of a serious implementation mechanism in the Geneva Conventions, much of the leading responsibility for promoting their observance falls upon the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the 150-year-old institution that is a sui generis hybrid between a Swiss non-governmental organization (NGO) and an international organization. With its secretariat in Geneva and delegations throughout the world, the ICRC is, in many conflicts, the most direct voice for the Conventions. The central role of the ICRC pre-dates the Conventions, for the ICRC has been the driving force behind the codification of international humanitarian law (IHL) since the mid-nineteenth century.
As a result, the Geneva Conventions, like their predecessors, contemplate, or even assign, certain responsibilities to the ICRC (or an equivalent organization that does not currently exist). Yet there is an enormous gap between the discrete and ultimately limited role of the ICRC under the Conventions and its actual operations, accepted as legitimate by most states and non-state actors. Today, the bulk of ICRC activities are not even mentioned in the Conventions, and the legal duty on states to cooperate with the ICRC is highly circumscribed. Rather, the institution has, in its long existence, succeeded in bypassing a weak treaty mandate through a process and identity characterized by discretion and flexibility. As a result, states now expect the ICRC to insert itself in situations of international armed conflict (IAC) and non-international armed conflict (NIAC), as well as in other non-conflict situations, and warring parties are expected to allow the ICRC to carry out its mandate. Both the ICRC’s operations and the expectations by and on states regarding its work demonstrate the limitations of relying upon the Conventions’ texts for understanding contemporary IHL
Francis Lieber on Public War
Full text linkThis paper examines Francis Lieber's concept of modern war as "public war" - in the Code he drafted for the 1863 Union Armies and in his earlier writings. Though Lieber was not the first to engage the distinction between private and public war, his treatment of modern war as exclusively public nevertheless deserves special attention. It became, in time, a foundational concept of the 19th Century effort to modernize and humanize the laws of war. Today, it remains embedded, albeit implicit, in contemporary international humanitarian law and its paradigmatic interstate war outlook.Yet Lieber's public war definition was driven by the ideological sensibilities of his youth in Vormärz Germany: romantic nationalism, ardent republicanism, and profound faith in modernity and progress. It took normative form but was, essentially, an ideological assertion. Lieber's public war definition sought to offer ideological justification for the modern nation State, its formation and existence. It also sought to construct and justify, again in ideological terms, the formation, existence, and preservation of an international order comprised of nation States; such order, alone, could meet the challenges of modern conditions. For Lieber, limiting war to nations and States alone was an ideological imperative of progressive civilization in the modern age.Reflection on Lieber's public war definition suggest lines of inquiry that may produce a richer understanding of the intellectual foundations and ideological motivation of modern international law. At the same time, such inquiries compel historical, normative, and policy reconsideration of interstate paradigm of war and its costs. They also promise to enrich contemporary normative and policy debates about the regulation of privatized warfare and non-state actors.© 2012, The Author. This is the final published version of the article (version of record) uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self- archiving policy. It first appeared online via the Goettingen Journal of International Law at the link
Francis Lieber on Public War
Full text linkThis paper examines Francis Lieber's concept of modern war as "public war" - in the Code he drafted for the 1863 Union Armies and in his earlier writings. Though Lieber was not the first to engage the distinction between private and public war, his treatment of modern war as exclusively public nevertheless deserves special attention. It became, in time, a foundational concept of the 19th Century effort to modernize and humanize the laws of war. Today, it remains embedded, albeit implicit, in contemporary international humanitarian law and its paradigmatic interstate war outlook.Yet Lieber's public war definition was driven by the ideological sensibilities of his youth in Vormärz Germany: romantic nationalism, ardent republicanism, and profound faith in modernity and progress. It took normative form but was, essentially, an ideological assertion. Lieber's public war definition sought to offer ideological justification for the modern nation State, its formation and existence. It also sought to construct and justify, again in ideological terms, the formation, existence, and preservation of an international order comprised of nation States; such order, alone, could meet the challenges of modern conditions. For Lieber, limiting war to nations and States alone was an ideological imperative of progressive civilization in the modern age.Reflection on Lieber's public war definition suggest lines of inquiry that may produce a richer understanding of the intellectual foundations and ideological motivation of modern international law. At the same time, such inquiries compel historical, normative, and policy reconsideration of interstate paradigm of war and its costs. They also promise to enrich contemporary normative and policy debates about the regulation of privatized warfare and non-state actors.© 2012, The Author. This is the final published version of the article (version of record) uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self- archiving policy. It first appeared online via the Goettingen Journal of International Law at the link
Apartheid, Jewish Identity, and Early Israeli Foreign Policy
No full textThis blog post focuses on the early diplomatic relations between South African and Israel and on the Jewish factor of these relation
Francis Lieber on Public War
No full textThis paper examines Francis Lieber's concept of modern war as "public war" - in the Code he drafted for the 1863 Union Armies and in his earlier writings. Though Lieber was not the first to engage the distinction between private and public war, his treatment of modern war as exclusively public nevertheless deserves special attention. It became, in time, a foundational concept of the 19th Century effort to modernize and humanize the laws of war. Today, it remains embedded, albeit implicit, in contemporary international humanitarian law and its paradigmatic interstate war outlook.
Yet Lieber's public war definition was driven by the ideological sensibilities of his youth in Vormärz Germany: romantic nationalism, ardent republicanism, and profound faith in modernity and progress. It took normative form but was, essentially, an ideological assertion. Lieber's public war definition sought to offer ideological justification for the modern nation State, its formation and existence. It also sought to construct and justify, again in ideological terms, the formation, existence, and preservation of an international order comprised of nation States; such order, alone, could meet the challenges of modern conditions. For Lieber, limiting war to nations and States alone was an ideological imperative of progressive civilization in the modern age.
Reflection on Lieber's public war definition suggest lines of inquiry that may produce a richer understanding of the intellectual foundations and ideological motivation of modern international law. At the same time, such inquiries compel historical, normative, and policy reconsideration of interstate paradigm of war and its costs. They also promise to enrich contemporary normative and policy debates about the regulation of privatized warfare and non-state actors. 
Recommended from our members
Jews, sovereignty, and international law ::ideology and ambivalence in early Israeli legal diplomacy /
No full textBy departing from accounts of a universalist component in Israel's early foreign policy, Rotem Giladi challenges prevalent assumptions on the cosmopolitan outlook of Jewish international law scholars and practitioners, offers new vantage points on modern Jewish history, and critiques orthodox interpretations of the Jewish aspect of Israel's foreign policy. Drawing on archival sources, the book reveals the patent ambivalence of two jurist-diplomats-Jacob Robinson and Shabtai Rosenne-towards three international law reform projects: the right of petition in the draft Human Rights Covenant, the 1948 Genocide Convention, and the 1951 Refugee Convention. In all cases, Rosenne and Robinson approached international law with disinterest, aversion, and hostility while, nonetheless, investing much time and toil in these post-war reforms
- …
