History of International Law

The last two weeks have taken us from headlines to bylines and beyond. Front-page legal questions on USA-Greenland and Russia-Ukraine continue to occupy commentators. While others draw our attention to the lesser thumbed back pages: from colonial-era agreements in contemporary arbitration, and the recognition of Somaliland, to the "stateless eight" suspended in legal limbo at the International Residual…

Scholarship over the past decade or so has been interested in the imperial origins of international investment law. As much as the current regime has undergone reform, some relics continue to present thorns in the current ‘decolonised’ landscape. They expose its problematic origins and, more importantly, its present-day ramifications. This post cautions against the…

This is a post in our Joint Symposium on "Negotiating a Treaty on Crimes Against Humanity" run in partnership with Just Security.  Understanding the history of a legal concept can help illuminate its normative content, and explain what it stands for, why it is defined in a particular way, and how it relates to…

The United Nations Charter entered into force eighty years ago on 24 October 1945.  Eighty years is a long life for a world order. Empires, like people, rarely last much longer. Every empire, every world order, moves through recognisable phases. There is the founding impulse – violent, visionary, unifying – when new institutions are hewn…