{"title":"Fourteen ways of looking back at the Treaty of Versailles†","authors":"Dino Kritsiotis","doi":"10.1093/lril/lraa017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/lril/lraa017","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 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.","PeriodicalId":43782,"journal":{"name":"London Review of International Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44702295","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 corporation and three Cokes","authors":"Susan Marks","doi":"10.1093/lril/lraa006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/lril/lraa006","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43782,"journal":{"name":"London Review of International Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/lril/lraa006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43832191","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":"Calling out Monsieur le Capital: remoralisation, subjectivity, agency, and change in The Corporation, Law and Capitalism","authors":"Honor Brabazon","doi":"10.1093/lril/lraa011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/lril/lraa011","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43782,"journal":{"name":"London Review of International Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/lril/lraa011","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42807927","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":"On the methodological limits of the commodity form theory of law in The Corporation, Law and Capitalism","authors":"Maïa Pal","doi":"10.1093/lril/lraa012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/lril/lraa012","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43782,"journal":{"name":"London Review of International Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/lril/lraa012","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47902372","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":"Visuality of a treaty: reflection on Versailles","authors":"Kate Miles","doi":"10.1093/lril/lraa009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/lril/lraa009","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This 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.","PeriodicalId":43782,"journal":{"name":"London Review of International Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/lril/lraa009","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42514686","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 League of Nations, autonomy and collective security","authors":"N. White","doi":"10.1093/lril/lraa010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/lril/lraa010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This 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.","PeriodicalId":43782,"journal":{"name":"London Review of International Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/lril/lraa010","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44027081","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":"Writing in the time of coronavirus","authors":"G. Baars","doi":"10.1093/lril/lraa014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/lril/lraa014","url":null,"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 symposium— Susan Marks, Dan Danielsen, Emily Jones, Maı̈a 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. I am likewise looking forward to Jones’ Posthuman International Law,","PeriodicalId":43782,"journal":{"name":"London Review of International Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/lril/lraa014","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43340784","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":"Symposium on the centennial anniversary of the Peace of Versailles: verdicts and revisitations","authors":"Dino Kritsiotis, Therese O'Donnell","doi":"10.1093/lril/lraa015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/lril/lraa015","url":null,"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, 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.","PeriodicalId":43782,"journal":{"name":"London Review of International Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/lril/lraa015","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48126093","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":"Book Symposium","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/lril/lraa016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/lril/lraa016","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Grietje Baars, The Corporation, Law, and Capitalism: A Radical Perspective on the Role of Law in Global Political Economy (Brill, 2019)","PeriodicalId":43782,"journal":{"name":"London Review of International Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47853267","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":"Designing Versailles: landscapes and the perspectival peace","authors":"Therese O'Donnell","doi":"10.1093/lril/lraa013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/lril/lraa013","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses the importance of the 1919 peace treaty's signing at Versailles and the consequent signalling (both explicit and implicit) about its terms, particularly regarding then emerging notions of self-determination, one of US President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points. Given the treaty's enduring significance as a site for testing the possibilities of international law, particular attention is given to the troubling negotiating arrangements concerning the Middle East. In acknowledgement of the backdrop's grandeur and the Council of Four's cartographic approach, the design discipline of landscape architecture is employed for estimating how far self-determination was (or was not) realised. For Louis XIV, Versailles's landscaping represented Culture's triumph over Nature. Equally, for the 1919 peacemakers the treaty symbolised law's triumphant return after the unequalled annihilation evident on the Western Front and Dardanelles beaches. Both grand projects suggested Cartesian notions. More compellingly, both Louis XIV and the Four (and in particular Clemenceau and Lloyd George) fetishized an avaricious hegemonic order. As well as embracing aesthetic, pictorial meanings in the visual arts, tellingly, 'landscape' also concerns 'limited section[s], administrative area[s], territory'. Although the treaty-artefact was a matter of fact, it was also a historically situated aesthetics : framed and presented in particular ways, in a particular interior, to situate the gaze of specific viewers and imply certain political associations. Like many design ideals devised to dazzle passive onlookers, attractions were firmly located in the creators' eyes. The construction of Versailles’s artistically stunning landscape had emphasised an all-authoritative French territorial state. In 1919 Versailles was also a cultural practice and its landscape had value '…as a process by which social and subjective identities' were formed. In June 1919, just as in the curve of the seventeenth into the eighteenth century, power's material realisation was confirmed at Versailles.","PeriodicalId":43782,"journal":{"name":"London Review of International Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46726723","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}