International Law Abstract

concept and history of international law

This scientific article is about International Law, but as you've probably heard in the teaser, one can be even more precise by saying that it is about Public International Law.

What does that mean?
Using the adjective "public" to describe international law is in contrast to Private international law. Private international law is the law applicable to the relations between individuals and corporations when those relations are international, i.e. when they are not entirely located in one State. Private international law is at issue when, for instance, a Frenchman marries an Argentinian lady in Moscow, they settle and buy a flat in South Korea, have kids in Australia and finally divorce in South Africa. Many questions will arise: who is the judge competent for filing the divorce?
Which law applies?
Private international law is also at stake if a Chinese company sells goods to a Californian company, and that they are shipped on board a Danish cargo insured in Switzerland and which sinks off the coast of India because of a collision with an oil tanker flagging the flag of Panama. Same questions: which court may hear the case and which law applies?
Private international law is sometimes called "conflict of laws" because it is about resolving the conflict between the various domestic laws that could potentially apply in a case, and choosing the right one. That choice is usually to be made by application of domestic rules or by rules common to States and contained in treaties they have contracted. Private international law is a very important field of law, but this course will not address those transnational private law issues. Rather, the course will address the law applicable between public entities engaged in international relations. It will be about the law of what newspapers call the international community. Public International Law, or to make it short, international law, is sometimes called the Law of Nations. In Roman times, Roman law was applicable between the citizens of Rome, while the law applicable between the Roman republic (or the Roman Empire) and the tribes and kingdoms of the rest of the world was called "jus gentium". Jus gentium was common to both the Romans and the rest of the known world. It was said to be common to both because it derived from reason. Jus gentium was human, whereas Jus civile was specific to a people. Today, international law is still referred to as "le droit des gens" in French, or Volkerrecht in German or Volkerrecht in Dutch, which are all translations of the old "jus gentium". International law may still called by its Roman name, and treaties between kingdoms, cities and empiresmay have existed for thousands of years in fact, one of the oldest recorded treaty is the peace treaty of Kadesh which had been contracted around 1259 BC between the Hittites and the Egyptians.
Born in Europe, the public law of Europe established by the peace of Westphalia spread around the world
to become the fundamental paradigm of international law. In 1776, thirteen American colonies of the British crown seceded from it to become independent States. They created between them constitutional bounds within the American Republic, but they did not intend to change the fundamental paradigm
of international relations and law. Latin-American colonies of Spain and Portugal followed suit a few decades later, and again the basic social structure remained the same: equal sovereignty.
In 1815, at the Congress of Vienna, the turmoil resulting from the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars was put to rest by an exercise of restoration at the domestic level and by the re-establishment of a balance of powers, whereby one State alone was not sufficiently powerful to put in danger the peace on the continent. In 1885, at the Congress of Berlin, European States shared and apportioned between them the African continent, extending to their colonial domination the logic
of balance of power between them. And then, in 1914, Europe collectively committed suicide:
the Great War raged for four long years only to leave the continent on its knees, both materially and spiritually. Centuries of progress, science and industrial development
were turned into a terrible war machine. It was a total war, and the first international war
in which citizens of all social classes, not only professional soldiers, were called to fight and die.
The war ended because of the late involvement of the United States in the war, which tilted the stand-off in favour of the Allied and Associated powers. Germany was finally defeated, together with the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. After the war, the peace was largely be based on the famous Fourteen Points made public by President Wilson in January 1918. It resulted in the peace treaty of Versailles and the other peace treaties concluded with the central powers in 1919. Germany became a republic, had to pay war reparations and lost all of its colonies; Alsace-Lorraine was restituted to France; the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire were dismantled.
On the ruins of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, new States were created on the basis of the principle of nationalities, and Poland, which had disappeared for 123 years, was re-established. Furthermore, and for the first time in human history, an international organization was set up for the purpose of maintaining
international peace and security. It was called the "League of Nations" and its Covenant
was the first part of the peace treaty of Versailles. Versailles was a defining moment in history
and that is why I chose a painting representing the ceremony of the signature of the peace treaty
as the banner for this course. The painting is by William Orpen and is to be seen at the Imperial War Museum in London. However, when you think of it, Versailles was a very ambivalent moment for international law: it was a peace treaty and it embodied the hope that international law, notably through the establishment of the League of Nations, could bring peace to the world. And, as we know, that hope, that promise of international law, dramatically failed only 20 years later. After the rejection of the peace treaty by the US Congress and the isolation in which Western powers had kept the young Soviet Union since the revolution of 1917, the League of Nations was born as a very weak organization and it proved incapable of reacting to the challenges posed by fascist Italy, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.
Furthermore, and despite presenting itself as an instrument of peace and justice between nations,
and the beginning of a new era, the treaty of Versailles was also an instrument of continued domination,
therefore pointing at the deep ambivalence of international law: it was of course an instrument of domination over Germany, but look around the table: you only see faces of white men, except for an Indian Maharajah as obedient servant of the British empire. True, if you look at the whole painting through the link to be found after this video, you'll also view the representative of Japan.
But that's it. That was the world, and the world order, in 1919. Of course, today, the face and the concerns of the international community have dramatically changed. But the ambivalence of international law both as a promise of peace and justice, and an instrument of domination, that ambivalence remains.
That is why Versailles is so appropriate to illustrate this scientific article .