Strategically Created Treaty Conflicts and the Politics of International Law

A richly textured account of the making, implementing, and changing of international legal regimes, which encompasses law, politics and economics.

Surabhi Ranganathan (Author)

9781107618497, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 November 2016

484 pages, 1 table
23 x 15.3 x 2.7 cm, 0.8 kg

'Strategically Created Treaty Conflicts and the Politics of International Law is a welcome addition to the study of treaty conflicts and to the study of the relationship between international law and international relations. The three case studies show how ambitious multilateral regimes bend in the face of political realities. At the same time, they reveal how multilateral agreements become part of the geopolitical landscape that shapes the actions and legal norms of even the most powerful of nations. They further show how the craft of international law often involves not only 'speaking law to power' but also serving as a bridge to resolve conflicting positions. By inviting us to think of treaty conflict not only in terms of direct conflicts between mutually exclusive treaty obligations but also in terms of overall conflict in effect, Ranganathan provides an illuminating account of treaty conflict and the dance between law and power in practice.' Sabrina Safrin, European Journal of International Law

Treaty conflicts are not merely the contingent or inadvertent by-products of the increasing juridification of international relations. In several instances, states have deliberately created treaty conflicts in order to catalyse changes in multilateral regimes. Surabhi Ranganathan uses such conflicts as context to explore the role of international law, in legal thought and practice. Her examinations of the International Law Commission's work on treaties and of various scholars' proposals on institutional action, offer a fresh view of 'mainstream' legal thought. They locate, in a variety of writings, a common faith in international legal discourse, built on liberal and constructivist assumptions. Ranganathan's three rich studies of treaty conflict, relating to the areas of seabed mining, the International Criminal Court, and nuclear governance, furnish a textured account of the specific forms and practices that constitute such a legal discourse and permit a grounded understanding of the interactions that shape international law.

Foreword James Crawford
Part I. Introduction: 1. Strategically created treaty conflicts
Part II. International Law Thought: 2. Writing the 'principle of political decision' into the law of treaties
3. The idea of effective implementation of treaties
Part III. Treaty Conflicts in Practice: 4. Notions of ocean: the dispute over deep seabed mining
5. Courting the United States? The International Criminal Court and Article 98 Agreements
6. Fissions in the nuclear order: the India-US nuclear deal and the nuclear governance regime
Part IV. Conclusion: 7. The politics of international law
Appendices.

Subject Areas: Public international law [LBB], Comparative law [LAM], International relations [JPS]