The Analogy between States and International Organizations

Discusses how an analogy between States and international organizations has influenced the development of international law.

Fernando Lusa Bordin (Author)

9781107155558, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 22 November 2018

296 pages
23.4 x 15.6 x 2 cm, 0.55 kg

'The simplicity of [the book's] title is deceptive. Not only does [Bordin] explore the philosophical foundations for using analogical reasoning in the law generally, and the case for its use as applied to states and IOs, he is no less interested in the limitations, paradoxes, and contestable features of the analogy, and also highlights instances where IOs' legal position is assimilated to that of states, but without any justification rooted in systemic logic … Bordin's treatment of the ILC materials is fine-grained but never turgid, and achieves an impressive balance between wider themes at stake and the particularity of interventions by ILC members, sensitive both to the pulls of underlying logic and to political contingencies in shaping the ILC's debates … This is surely of great value to practitioners and scholars …' Simon C. Milnes, British Yearbook of International Law

The book investigates how an analogy between States and international organizations has influenced and supported the development of the law that applies to intergovernmental institutions on the international plane. That is best illustrated by the work of the International Law Commission on the treaties and responsibility of international organizations, where the Commission for the most part extended to organizations rules that had been originally devised for States. Revisiting those codification projects while also looking into other areas, the book reflects on how techniques of legal reasoning can be - and have been - used by international institutions and the legal profession to tackle situations of uncertainty, and discusses the elusive position that international organizations occupy in the international legal system. By cutting across some foundational topics of the discipline, the book makes a substantive contribution to the literature on subjects and sources of international law.

Foreword
Acknowledgements
Table of cases
Select table of key documents
List of abbreviations
Introduction
Part I. The Case for an Analogy: 1. Analogy in international legal reasoning
2. The foundations of the analogy between states and international organizations
Part II. Objections to the Analogy: 3. Structural differences between states and international organizations
4. International organizations as 'special subjects'
5. International organizations as 'layered subjects'
Part III. Limits of the Analogy: 6. Analogy in the relations between organizations and members
7. Normative contestation of the analogy
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: International organisations & institutions [LBBU], Public international law [LBB]