The Gentle Civilizer of Nations
The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960

Legal analysis, historical and political critique of the rise and fall of modern international law.

Martti Koskenniemi (Author)

9780521548090, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 19 August 2004

584 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 3.5 cm, 0.83 kg

'…Martti Koskenniemi is the first author in decades to concentrate on the development and history of public international law with special regard to its theoretical foundations in a monographic study … He studies and describes with the utmost precision the development and institutionalization of modern public international law as well as the professionalization of the discipline in its most exciting and important periods of development.' Journal of German History

International law was born from the impulse to 'civilize' late nineteenth-century attitudes towards race and society, argues Martti Koskenniemi in this extensive study of the rise and fall of modern international law. In a work of wide-ranging intellectual scope, now available for the first time in paperback, Koskenniemi traces the emergence of a liberal sensibility relating to international matters in the late nineteenth century, and its subsequent decline after the Second World War. He combines legal analysis, historical and political critique and semi-biographical studies of key figures (including Hans Kelsen, Hersch Lauterpacht, Carl Schmitt and Hans Morgenthau); he also considers the role of crucial institutions (the Institut de droit international, the League of Nations). His discussion of legal and political realism at American law schools ends in a critique of post-1960 'instrumentalism'. This book provides a unique reflection on the possibility of critical international law today.

Introduction
1. 'The legal conscience of the civilized world'
2. Sovereignty: a gift of civilization
3. International law as philosophy: Germany 1871–1933
4. International law as sociology: French 'solidarism' 1871-1950
5. Lauterpacht: the Victorian tradition in international law
6. Out of Europe: Carl Schmitt, Hans Morgenthau and the turn to 'international relations'
Epilogue.

Subject Areas: International law [LB], Legal history [LAZ], Systems of law [LAF], International relations [JPS]