{"title":"Australian Representatives to the UNWCC, 1943–1948","authors":"N. Morris","doi":"10.1163/15718050-12340204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15718050-12340204","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Australia had a number of significant personnel involved in the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC). Yet the strongest Australian influence on the UNWCC was not Australian at all; it was the British-born jurist Lord Wright of Durley, who served as Australia’s representative from mid-1944 and as UNWCC chair during the pivotal years from 1945 to 1948. Lord Wright took charge only months before the wars in Europe and the Pacific ended and thus played a significant role in directing the UNWCC’s efforts during this crucial period. Unfortunately, the UNWCC became less and less able over time to influence its national members and their approaches to prosecuting war crimes. The eventual sidelining of the UNWCC does not, however, change its important place in the history of multilateral institutions that sought to deal with war crimes committed in the twentieth century by means of international criminal law. Nor does it detract from the honest and industrious work of the various national representatives, including Lord Wright, to ensure that war criminals did not escape justice.","PeriodicalId":43459,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW","volume":"432 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76542006","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Crossroads in London on the Road to Nuremberg: The London International Assembly, Exile Governments and War Crimes","authors":"J. Eichenberg","doi":"10.1163/15718050-bja10071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15718050-bja10071","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000During the Second World War, representatives of occupied European countries fled the continent, mostly to Great Britain. From 1940 onwards, exiled political representatives of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Yugoslavia and Free France were situated in London. This initiated debates about a broad range of legal issues, ranging from recognition and legitimacy to post-war justice. Law thus became a focal point in London, both imperative to uphold statehood and legitimacy in exile and an indispensable tool for planning and structuring the post-war world. This article looks at the pre-history of the UNWCC and presents interests and forces behind the creation of such a commission, and the attempts of different groups, states and individuals to maintain agency. This article will introduce discussions around the St James’s Declaration, the London International Assembly (LIA) and at Chatham House as important steps leading towards the UNWCC.","PeriodicalId":43459,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75296995","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The United Nations War Crimes Commission and the Prosecution of War Criminals in Yugoslavia","authors":"Sabina Ferhadbegović","doi":"10.1163/15718050-bja10066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15718050-bja10066","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000To understand the different developments that shaped the Yugoslav war crimes policy it is important to analyse the impact of international discussions on the Yugoslav criminal law and the Yugoslav involvement in the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC). During the Second World War two different institutions claimed to be the legal representatives of the Yugoslav people: The Yugoslav government in exile in London and the communist led AVNOJ (The Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia). With this in mind, this paper analyses Yugoslav war crimes policies from different perspectives and in different settings. It shows that the Yugoslav`s discussion about the punishment of war criminals was influenced by power struggles, geopolitical aims, and legitimacy. While Yugoslav government in exile got lost in internal nationalist struggles, it was the Yugoslav representative at the UNWCC, and the communist led State commission to investigate the crimes of the occupiers and their accomplices who took the active role and shaped the Yugoslav war crimes policy. In consequence the Yugoslav national law for prosecuting war crimes was developed from different sources: pre-WWII traditions, Soviet law, and the UNWCC.","PeriodicalId":43459,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82612267","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Epistemic Communities of Exile Lawyers at the UNWCC","authors":"K. Lingen","doi":"10.1163/15718050-bja10072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15718050-bja10072","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000During the 1940s in London, exiled lawyers from Europe and Asia were among the main actors in coining one of the most known principles of international criminal law. The notion of ‘crimes against humanity’ emanated from their legal debates. This paper debates how the term surfaced in meetings of the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) in 1944 and was taken up by the London Charter for the Nuremberg International Tribunal in 1945. Legal concepts, which previously needed to be discussed at conferences and via correspondence, developed much more quickly in the ‘breeding ground’ of the exile situation in London and were influenced by different legal traditions, here termed ‘legal flows’.","PeriodicalId":43459,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76012006","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Lawyer in Exile: Johannes M. de Moor and the Circulation of Legal Knowledge in Wartime London","authors":"Sara Weydner","doi":"10.1163/15718050-bja10067","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15718050-bja10067","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000De Moor’s biography illustrates how people and ideas travelled between and within national and transnational spaces. He played a role in the circulation of legal knowledge in the transnational epistemic community, more precisely between the Cambridge Commission and the London International Assembly. In thinking about the future of the international order and the place of nation states within it, De Moor came to embrace the idea that state sovereignty and the rule of law had to be recalibrated and that, as a logical conclusion, war crimes could be prosecuted internationally. In London, he became an advocate for a universal organization backed by an international court and an international armed force. He envisioned an international rule of law as the underlying system governing the international order.","PeriodicalId":43459,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90412604","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Origins of Regional Ideas: International Law, External Legitimization and Latin America’s ‘legalismo’","authors":"Nicole Jenne","doi":"10.1163/15718050-bja10022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15718050-bja10022","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Latin American politics are widely characterized by legalismo: a set of practices that can be traced to the notion of a continental or regional, American or Latin American International Law (AIL/LAIL) including the American international congresses and treaties, the practice of invoking AIL/LAIL’s various principles, and the use of judicial and quasi-judicial means of conflict resolution. However, it is far less clear where the origins of Latin America’s legalismo culture lay. Moreover, why did this formalistic-legalistic culture not take root in other regions? The article uses an original comparative historical approach to show that legalismo was a product of two conditions unique to Latin America: the distinctive security needs of its newly independent states and the time of independence. In comparison with Southeast Asia and Africa, I argue that legalismo was central to Latin America’s regional idea but that the practical impact of international law was not stronger than elsewhere.","PeriodicalId":43459,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87694511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Great Britain, International Law, and the Evolution of Maritime Strategic Thought, 1856–1914, written by Gabriela Frei","authors":"Frederik Dhondt","doi":"10.1163/15718050-12340205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15718050-12340205","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43459,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW","volume":"66 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76513917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pan-Americanism as a Hemispheric Model for a Global Order?: The Pan-American Peace Pact of 1914","authors":"Klaas Dykmann","doi":"10.1163/15718050-12340194","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15718050-12340194","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Some in US President Woodrow Wilson’s administration saw an opening to seize several opportunities in 1914 to present the United States as a hemispheric unifier offering an alternative for war-torn Europe. Since an international convention or a negotiated solution in Europe seemed unlikely, the US tried to establish a peace agreement for the western hemisphere to universalise American international law and multilateralise the Monroe Doctrine in a way that would mutually recognise each American republic’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and demonstrate to Europe that a negotiated peace was possible. This article analyses the emergence of the idea of the Pan-American Peace Pact and its regional and global significance in view of the League of Nations that was later established.</p>","PeriodicalId":43459,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138532119","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Exclusion vs Cooperation in the Utilisation of Transboundary Watercourses: The Case for Decolonising the Nile Water Agreements","authors":"Fekade Abebe","doi":"10.1163/15718050-bja10062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15718050-bja10062","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The relationship between Egypt and Ethiopia was marked with tension for centuries due to the utilisation of the Nile river. Recently, it took a turn for the worst after Ethiopia announced it is building the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (<span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">GERD</span>) on the Nile river. This article argues that one important explanation for the deep-seated disagreements between Egypt and Ethiopia is the history of the legal instruments frequently invoked which were set up to safeguard the colonial interest of Britain over Egypt and the entire upper Nile region. Britain’s use of these legal instruments to advance its colonial domination of the region, with disregard to the interests of native communities, had left a legacy of exclusive utilisation over the river which haunts the current legal discourse. The article argues that the Nile basin countries need to acknowledge this colonial legacy in the legal discourse and need to move towards cooperation.</p>","PeriodicalId":43459,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW","volume":"54 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138532122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Historical Origins of the Duty to Save Life at Sea in International Law","authors":"Irini Papanicolopulu","doi":"10.1163/15718050-12340199","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15718050-12340199","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The article looks into the historical development of the international law duty to save life at sea. It argues that this duty has its origins into legal sources that predated the genesis of international law in the sixteenth century. According to these sources, three separate sets of norms were developed to address the need to save life at sea: rules on the safety of navigation; rules concerning assistance to the shipwrecked and their protection; and rules on the duty of masters to provide assistance. Leaving aside the first category, the article illustrates how these sources where used by seventeenth and eighteenth century international lawyers to substantiate the existence of a duty to assist the shipwrecked and a right to seek refuge for vessels in distress. Nineteenth century scholars added the duty of the master to provide rescue. These scholarly codifications set the basis for a codification, first by learned societies and then by states, during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Codification was eventually achieved through two conventions adopted in 1910. The article argues that while the content of the duty changed to adapt to technological developments affecting navigation, as well as to changing perceptions of the sources and effects of international law, the common principle at its basis has always been part of international law.</p>","PeriodicalId":43459,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138532138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}