T H E H I S TORY A N D T H EORY OF I N T E R NAT IONA L L AW ALSO PUBLISHED BY OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
T H E H I S TORY A N D T H EORY OF I N T E R NAT IONA L L AW
Sinclair
International Law and Empire Historical Explorations Edited by Martti Koskenniemi, Walter Rech, and Manuel Jiménez Fonseca
General Editors NEHAL BHUTA
Professor of Public International Law, European University Institute Formalizing Displacement International Law and Population Transfers Umut Özsu
ANTHONY PAGDEN
Distinguished Professor, University of California Los Angeles Alberico Gentili Senior Fellow, New York University School of Law
In the past few decades the understanding of the relationship between nations has undergone a radical transformation. The role of the traditional nation-state is diminishing, along with many of the traditional vocabularies which were once used to describe what has been called, ever since Jeremy Bentham coined the phrase in 1780, ‘international law’. The older boundaries between states are growing ever more fluid, new conceptions and new languages have emerged which are slowly coming to replace the image of a world of sovereign independent nation states which has dominated the study of international relations since the early nineteenth century. This redefinition of the international arena demands a new understanding of classical and contemporary questions in international and legal theory. It is the editors’ conviction that the best way to achieve this is by bridging the traditional divide between international legal theory, intellectual history, and legal and political history. The aim of the series, therefore, is to provide a forum for historical studies, from classical antiquity to the twenty-first century, that are theoretically-informed and for philosophical work that is historically conscious, in the hope that a new vision of the rapidly evolving international world, its past and its possible future, may emerge. PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED IN THIS SERIES Historical Explorations International Law and Empire Edited by Martti Koskenniemi, Walter Rech, and Manuel Jiménez Fonseca
TO REFORM THE WORLD
BENJAMIN STRAUMANN
The Project of Positivism in International Law Mónica García-Salmones Rovira
Hermann Heller
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SOVEREIGNTY
Guy Fiti Sinclair is a Senior Lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington Law School.
A CONTRIBUTION TO THE THEORY OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL LAW
The Project of Positivism in International Law Mónica García-Salmones Rovira
Jacket image:
9780198810544.indd 1
In this book, Guy Fiti Sinclair explores how international organizations have expanded their powers over time without formally amending their founding treaties. International organizations intervene in military, financial, economic, political, social, and cultural affairs, and increasingly take on roles not explicitly assigned to them by law. Sinclair contends that this ‘mission creep’ has been understood and justified in international law as necessary to enable international organizations recast states, societies, and peoples on a broadly Western, liberal model. Adopting an interdisciplinary, socio-legal approach, Sinclair supports this claim through detailed investigations of historical episodes involving three very different organizations: the International Labour Organization in the interwar period; the United Nations in the two decades following the Second World War; and the World Bank from the 1950s through to the 1990s. The book draws on a wide range of original institutional and archival materials, bringing to light little-known aspects of each organization’s activities, identifying continuities in the ideas and practices of international governance across the twentieth century, and speaking to a range of pressing theoretical questions in present-day international law and international relations.
Edited and Introduced by David Dyzenhaus
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