International law was born from the impulse to 'civilize' late nineteenth-century attitudes towards race and society, argues Martti Koskenniemi in this extensive study of the rise and fall of modern international law. In a work of wide-ranging intellectual scope, now available for the first time in paperback, Koskenniemi traces the emergence of a liberal sensibility relating to international matters in the late nineteenth century, and its subsequent decline after the Second World War. He combines legal analysis, historical and political critique and semi-biographical studies of key figures (including Hans Kelsen, Hersch Lauterpacht, Carl Schmitt and Hans Morgenthau); he also considers the role of crucial institutions (the Institut de droit international, the League of Nations). His discussion of legal and political realism at American law schools ends in a critique of post-1960 'instrumentalism'. This book provides a unique reflection on the possibility of critical international law today.
ISBN: | 9780521548090 |
Publication date: | 19th August 2004 |
Author: | Martti Koskenniemi |
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
Format: | Paperback |
Pagination: | 569 pages |
Series: | Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures |
Genres: |
International law International relations Systems of law Legal history |