Events: The Force of International Law The Force of International Law

Presents an analysis of international law, centred upon those events in which international law has exerted, or acquired, its force. This book covers various events, ranging from Spanish colonization and the Peace of Westphalia, through the release of Nelson Mandela and the Rwandan genocide, and to international trade negotiations.

Events: The Force of International Law presents an analysis of international law, centred upon those historical and recent events in which international law has exerted, or acquired, its force. From Spanish colonization and the Peace of Westphalia, through the release of Nelson Mandela and the Rwandan genocide, and to recent international trade negotiations and the 'torture memos', each chapter in this book focuses on a specific international legal event. Short and accessible to the non-specialist reader, these chapters consider what forces are put into play when international law is invoked, as it is so frequently today, by lawyers, laypeople, or leaders. At the same time, they also reflect on what is entailed in naming these ‘events’ of international law and how international law grapples with their disruptive potential. Engaging economic, military, cultural, political, philosophical and technical fields, Events: The Force of International Law will be of interest to international lawyers and scholars of international relations, legal history, diplomatic history, war and/or peace studies, and legal theory. It is also intended to be read and appreciated by anyone familiar with appeals to international law from the general media, and curious about the limits and possibilities occasioned, or the forces mobilised, by that appeal.

Foreword, Martti Koskenniemi 1. Introduction, Fleur Johns, Richard Joyce & Sundhya Pahuja 2. The International Law in Force: Anachronistic Ethics and Divine Violence, Jennifer Beard 3. Absolute Contingency and the Prescriptive Force of International Law, Chiapas-Valladolid, ca. 1550, Oscar Guardiola-Rivera 4. Latin Roots: The Force of International Law as Event, Peter Fitzpatrick 5. Westphalia: Event, Memory, Myth, Richard Joyce 6. The Force of a Doctrine: Art. 38 of the PCIJ Statute and the Sources of International Law, Thomas Skouteris 7. Paris 1793 and 1871: Levée en Masse as Event, Gerry Simpson 8. Decolonisation and the Eventness of International Law, Sundhya Pahuja 9. Postwar to New World Order and Post-Socialist Transition: 1989 As Pseudo-Event, Scott Newton 10. The Liberation of Nelson Mandela: Anatomy of a "Happy Event" in International Law, Frédéric Mégret 11. Political Trials as Events, Emilios Christodoulidis 12. The Tokyo Women’s Tribunal and the Turn to Fiction, Karen Knop 13. Many Hundred Thousand Bodies Later: An Analysis of the ‘Legacy’ of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Denise Ferreira da Silva 14. From the State to the Union: International Law and the Appropriation of the New Europe, Patricia Tuitt 15. The Emergence of the World Trade Organization: Another Triumph of Corporate Capitalism? Fiona Macmillan 16. The World Trade Organisation and Development: Victory of ‘Rational Choice’? Donatella Alessandrini 17. Protesting the WTO in Seattle: Transnational Citizen Action, International Law and the Event, Ruth Buchanan 18. Globalism, Memory and 9/11: A Critical Third World Perspective, Obiora Chinedu Okafor 19. Provoking International Law: War and Regime Change in Iraq, John Strawson20. The Torture Memos, Fleur Johns

Fleur Johns is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, University of Sydney and Co-Director of the Sydney Centre for International Law. Richard Joyce is a Lecturer in the School of Law, University of Reading. He works in the fields of legal theory, international law and intellectual property. Sundhya Pahuja is an Associate Professor in the Law School, University of Melbourne and Director of the Law and Development Research Programme at the Institute for International Law and the Humanities.