JournalTOCs

London Review of International Law
Number of Followers: 8

Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)
ISSN (Print) 2050-6325 - ISSN (Online) 2050-6333
Published by Oxford University Press

[413 journals]

Symposium on the centennial anniversary of the Peace of Versailles:
verdicts and revisitations
- Authors: Kritsiotis D; O’Donnell T.
  Pages: 3 - 5
  Abstract: One momentous day in June 1919 is often remembered, contrastingly, in the technicolour of its ambition and attempted modernity, or the foreboding monochrome of its destructive, self-delusion. However, the chromatic spectrum of the treaty’s reality, both in its own time but also in its enduring legacy, highlights the peace project’s formidable complexity. Just as the haze of the summer of 1914 is so compellingly captured in the tragic remembrances of pre-war tennis matches in Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth,11 so the vision of 1919 bathes in seasonal shimmers and phosphorescent flashbacks that cannot help but be the product of emotion rather than cool dissection. However, the peace process born of the Great War remains an exercise in revelation, as public international lawyers continue to interact with it well into the 21st century. Yet, there is (as perhaps there has always been) a distinct unsettling at how the peace settlement’s suffocating old-world tropes jostle with the first pangs of a new, scarcely recognisable, international society in the livery of the League of Nations. Like Mrs Dalloway, our various disorientating encounters with these events—these past, these living events—force us to reckon with the roles of time, faith and doubt in our discipline.
  PubDate: Fri, 23 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/lril/lraa015
  Issue No: Vol. 8, No. 1 (2020)
Visuality of a treaty: reflection on Versailles
- Authors: Miles K.
  Pages: 7 - 41
  Abstract: AbstractThis article revisits one moment in international law through the prism of visual culture, analysing paintings, photographs and political cartoons of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. It considers the historical representation of treaty-making, narratives of international law as beneficent universal regulator and spectacle, and the projection of ‘successful’ international law through image. It reflects on photographs that capture working, ‘behind-the-scenes’ moments and portrayals of a more agitated, restless visual international law. And it explores the idea that visuality contributes to the construction of international legal reality and is a specific site of meaning for our understanding of treaty-making at Versailles.
  PubDate: Thu, 25 Jun 2020 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/lril/lraa009
  Issue No: Vol. 8, No. 1 (2020)
Fourteen ways of looking back at the Treaty of Versailles†
- Authors: Kritsiotis D.
  Pages: 43 - 88
  Abstract: Abstract:This article examines the idea of the Treaty of Versailles as a readily quantifiable corpus of provisions as set down in a readily identifiable document that was signed at the Palace of Versailles on 28 June 1919. It does so by recalling the pre-history to that peace that stretches as far back as US President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points of January 1918, for the German Government accepted these Fourteen Points as well as subsequent pronouncements of President Wilson as the basis for the peace that ended the Great War. Through a close engagement with diplomatic correspondence from October and November 1918, the article considers how impressions came to form that a ‘contract’ had been made with the enemy (John Maynard Keynes) by the time of the Armistice of Compiègne of November 1918—an apparent ‘charter for our future activity’ (Harold Nicolson) or a localized lex pacificatoria for its time. The article explores the amenability of each of the Fourteen Points to international normativity and, in its final section, it provides a broader account of how this set of positions shaped Germany’s official response to the draft treaty (‘Observations of the German Delegation on the Conditions of Peace’) that was released in May 1919.
  PubDate: Fri, 23 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/lril/lraa017
  Issue No: Vol. 8, No. 1 (2020)
The League of Nations, autonomy and collective security
- Authors: White N.
  Pages: 89 - 120
  Abstract: AbstractThis article tests the assumption that in institutional and legal design the League of Nations was incapable of providing collective security. The lens through which this issue is scrutinised is the concept of institutional legal autonomy, in other words the legal separation of the organisation from its member states. The thinking is not necessarily that the greater the autonomy the greater the potential of the organisation to fulfil its functions, but that the organisation already had sufficient autonomy in international relations to provide an effective form of ‘collective security’, a term that was not found in the Covenant but, by 1935, was being used to describe the response of the League to the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1935. This article tests the assumption that the League did not have sufficient autonomy in terms of collective judgment and power to deliver collective security.
  PubDate: Fri, 28 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/lril/lraa010
  Issue No: Vol. 8, No. 1 (2020)
Designing Versailles: landscapes and the perspectival peaceDedicated to
the memory of Frederick Arthur Farrell (29 November 1882 – 22 April
1935)
- Authors: O’Donnell T.
  Pages: 121 - 163
  Abstract: AbstractThis article analyses the 1919 peace treaty’s signing at Versailles, and what the magnificent staging signalled about the peace terms, notably regarding power and emerging notions of self-determination. In 1919, international society appeared to be on the threshold of a new era. However, a dissonance emerged between the peacemakers’ proclamations and the operationalisation of new principles of openness and emancipation. Certain royal houses and empires may have vanished but the remaining power-holders were not about to relinquish their dominance. While the familiar, blunt-edged tools of brazen colonialism were no longer available, some finer instruments and skilled professional expertise would finesse the details of an unequal hegemonic future. In all senses, this was a design project and in acknowledgement of Versailles’s backdrop and the peacemakers’ cartographic approach, landscape architecture’s specialist principles offer a lens for comprehending and critiquing the legal-political practices of Versailles 1919.
  PubDate: Fri, 23 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/lril/lraa013
  Issue No: Vol. 8, No. 1 (2020)
Book Symposium
- Pages: 167 - 167
  Abstract: AbstractGrietje Baars, The Corporation, Law, and Capitalism: A Radical Perspective on the Role of Law in Global Political Economy (Brill, 2019)
  PubDate: Fri, 23 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/lril/lraa016
  Issue No: Vol. 8, No. 1 (2020)
‘To see the world in a grain of sand’: law and capitalism revealed
through the corporation
- Authors: Danielsen D.
  Pages: 169 - 175
  Abstract: It is a great pleasure to contribute to this celebration of and critical engagement with what is unquestionably an extraordinary scholarly achievement.11 Professor Baars’ prior work and scholarly collaboration have been significant in the evolution of my own work. With this new volume, coming shortly on the heels of another ground-breaking volume, The Corporation: A Critical, Multi-Disciplinary Handbook,22 I have no doubt these achievements will inspire and challenge critical scholars of law, the corporation, capitalism and political economy for many years to come.
  PubDate: Fri, 17 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/lril/lraa007
  Issue No: Vol. 8, No. 1 (2020)
The corporation and three Cokes
- Authors: Marks S.
  Pages: 177 - 181
  Abstract: It’s a very great pleasure to be part of this symposium on The Corporation, Law and Capitalism.11 The book narrates a complex and immensely illuminating historical story, of which I am going to zoom in on just one strand. Or rather, I am going to zoom in on just one individual. Taking that person as my point of departure, I will tell a very short story of my own inspired by Grietje Baars’s themes.
  PubDate: Wed, 12 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/lril/lraa006
  Issue No: Vol. 8, No. 1 (2020)
The Corporation, Law and Capitalism: reflections on capitalist law and
queer resistance
- Authors: Jones E.
  Pages: 183 - 189
  Abstract: As a feminist scholar and theorist, I know that academic contributions come not only through the texts we write but also through our encounters with the wider world. Living a feminist life, as Sara Ahmed notes, is about the bringing together of feminist theory and everyday experiences, about living ethically and about the connections and ties we make.11 I met Grietje Baars around the second year of my doctoral studies. Throughout the time I have known them, I have appreciated not only our political and theoretical alignments but also their support of me as an early-career researcher. There are those who write on critical theory but do not practice it but that is quite definitely not Baars. Their activism and commitment to challenging dominant systems of power and knowledge is something which must be commended and which can be felt throughout reading The Corporation, Law and Capitalism; from the theoretical and legal interventions made to the explicit centring of the many practitioner, activist and scholarly voices and conversations which, Baars is clear to note, greatly informed the book.22 Baars’ commitment to seeking a better world is both evident within and goes beyond the text at hand, and their dedication and belief in that world can be felt throughout the text.
  PubDate: Fri, 17 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/lril/lraa008
  Issue No: Vol. 8, No. 1 (2020)
On the methodological limits of the commodity form theory of law in The
Corporation, Law and Capitalism
- Authors: Pal M.
  Pages: 191 - 199
  Abstract: Grietje Baars’s The Corporation, Law and Capitalism is an impressive and ambitious historical unfolding of the corporate legal form starting in Northern Europe in the early modern period and expanding globally in the 20th and 21st centuries.11 Methodologically, it is centred on the abstracting of a specific institution—the corporation—as the key analytic for exploring the historical relation between law and capitalism. Baars argues the corporation is one of the most important structural mechanisms at the heart of this relationship. In effect, the corporation enables a tracing and mapping of the various subterranean links between institutions and actors of capitalism, imperialism, and law.
  PubDate: Thu, 20 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/lril/lraa012
  Issue No: Vol. 8, No. 1 (2020)
Calling out Monsieur le Capital: remoralisation, subjectivity, agency, and
change in The Corporation, Law and Capitalism
- Authors: Brabazon H.
  Pages: 201 - 209
  Abstract: Grietje Baars’ The Corporation, Law and Capitalism: A Radical Perspective on the Role of Law in the Global Political Economy is an essential contribution to critical studies of international law and legal thought.11 The book is a response to popular calls for the use of international criminal law to hold corporations to account for their complicity in human rights violations. However, it is at heart a book about the relationship between law and capitalism and about the interplay between structure and agency.
  PubDate: Wed, 12 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/lril/lraa011
  Issue No: Vol. 8, No. 1 (2020)
Writing in the time of coronavirus
- Authors: Baars G.
  Pages: 211 - 222
  Abstract: Even though my book launch was just over a year ago, right now it feels like an eternity has passed. Reading everyone’s contributions in this moment makes me at once nostalgic, for a pre-pandemic time that is tempting to romanticise as ‘carefree’, and grateful. It takes only a fraction of a second to remember we were always already in crisis even if it had a different intensity. Still, I am grateful to be part of such an incredible community of scholars, and humans, whose work and friendship (dare I say comradeship) has sustained me over the past years and, in some cases, the past decade or more. It is that connection, that comradeship, and that willingness and ability to engage, critically if must be, with each other’s work, lives and projects that will carry us through beyond the present crisis, and to a world which in some (many) areas, needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. I am intensely grateful for the time, energy and care given to my book by the five scholars in this symposium11—Susan Marks, Dan Danielsen, Emily Jones, Maïa Pal, Honor Brabazon—and I know that even though we may disagree on certain issues (such as the utility of law) it is clear to me that we are ultimately working on a common project. Research and writing, and academic work more generally, is a collective effort and we complement each other’s work, generate synergies and push each other to go beyond. For example, I am happy to accept Pal’s challenge to my generalising, and at times flattening, description of the early modern state form. I look forward to her own book on this topic (Jurisdictional Accumulation: An Early Modern History of Law, Empires, and Capital), due to be published soon.22 I am likewise looking forward to Jones’ Posthuman International Law, which is set to force us to adjust our narrow anthropocentric understanding of law and capitalism. Brabazon’s The Criminalization of Dissent, also forthcoming and which surveys and theorises questions of strategy and tactics will be a welcome elaboration on the key points made by Robert Knox in his seminal article on this topic.33
  PubDate: Fri, 23 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/lril/lraa014
  Issue No: Vol. 8, No. 1 (2020)