Legal Personality In International Law

Several international legal issues are related to the concept of legal personality, including the determination of international rights and duties of non-state actors and the legal capacities of transnational institutions. When addressing these issues, different understandings of legal personality are employed. These concepts consider different entities to be international persons, state different criteria for becoming one and attach different consequences to being one. In this book, Roland Portmann systematizes the different positions on international personality by spelling out the assumptions on which they rest and examining how they were substantiated in legal practice. He puts forward the argument that positions on international personality which strongly emphasize the role of states or effective actors rely on assumptions that have been discarded in present international law. The principal argument is that international law has to be conceived as an open system, wherein there is no presumption for or against certain entities enjoying international personality.

Beyond Human Rights, previously published in German and now available in English, is a historical and doctrinal study about the legal status of individuals in international law.

This is the first monograph to scrutinize the relationship between the concept of international legal personality as a theoretical construct and the position of the ultimate subject, the individual, as a matter of positive international law. By testing the four main theoretical conceptions of international legal personality against historical and existing norms of positive international law that regulate the conduct of individuals, the book argues that the common narrative in contemporary scholarship about the development of the role of the individual in the international legal system is flawed. Contrary to conventional wisdom, international law did not apply to states alone until World War II, only to transform during the second half of the 20th century so as to include individuals as its subjects. Rather, the answer to the question of individual rights and obligations under international law is - and always was - strictly empirical. It follows, of course, that the entities governed by a particular norm tell us nothing about the legal system to which that norm belongs. Instead, the distinction between international law and national law turns exclusively on whether the source of the norm in question is international or national in kind. Against the background of these insights, the book shows how present-day international lawyers continue to allow an idea, which was never more than a scholarly invention of the 19th century, to influence the interpretation and application of international law. This state of affairs has significant real-world ramifications as international legal rights and obligations of individuals (and other non-state entities) are frequently applied more restrictively than interpretation without presumptions regarding 'personality' would merit.

This book is the report of a journey. The reader is invited to join the author on a th trip in time and space. The trip takes its starting-point in 17 century Europe and th the as yet confused post-Thirty Years War society. After some stops in the 18 th and 19 century the author brings us to the post-World War I society which is as confused and is torn between ideals and despair. Then we make a stop in the post-World War II society when ideals seemingly have made place for trust in power but where we also get a glance of the fragile sapling of human rights law. And finally we pause in the post-Cold War world and try to cast a look into the future. What is the purpose of this journey, what is the author in search of? As is clear from the title it is the concept of International Legal Personality which for many will have a rather formal and positive law connotation. But the journey does not take us into the cabinets of Foreign Ministries or to conference-rooms or United Nations-buildings where the law is made nor to the court-rooms where the law is interpreted and modelled.

This book is the report of a journey. The reader is invited to join the author on a th trip in time and space. The trip takes its starting-point in 17 century Europe and th the as yet confused post-Thirty Years War society. After some stops in the 18 th and 19 century the author brings us to the post-World War I society which is as confused and is torn between ideals and despair. Then we make a stop in the post-World War II society when ideals seemingly have made place for trust in power but where we also get a glance of the fragile sapling of human rights law. And finally we pause in the post-Cold War world and try to cast a look into the future. What is the purpose of this journey, what is the author in search of? As is clear from the title it is the concept of International Legal Personality which for many will have a rather formal and positive law connotation. But the journey does not take us into the cabinets of Foreign Ministries or to conference-rooms or United Nations-buildings where the law is made nor to the court-rooms where the law is interpreted and modelled.

Who or what is entitled to act on the international plane? Where should responsibility for violations of international law lie? What sort of entities are capable of possessing international legal rights? What is the status of individuals, minority groups, non-governmental bodies, international organisations and animals in the international legal order and how has their status shifted over time? International Legal Personality contains fourteen articles that address these and related questions. In historical and contemporary writings, international lawyers grapple with the nature of legal identity, and confront global distributions of authority and responsibility, as they explore who or what is a 'person' in the international legal order. These essays document the emergence of an international legal order increasingly conceived in terms of patterns and probabilities, rather than as the stagecraft of a small company of permanent players.

Essay from the year 2013 in the subject Law - European and International Law, Intellectual Properties, grade: 65, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, course: LLB, language: English, abstract: "Public international law is that system of law which is primarily concerned with the relations between states." (O'Brien J. International Law (Cavendish Publishing Limited, London 2001) at 1). The system is composed of subjects enjoying legal personality to a greater of lesser extent. Traditionally, it was a state that was a sole subject of international law. However "it is accepted today that the subject extends to rights and duties pertaining to international organisations, companies and individuals" (ibid.). The present essay explores the scope of the concept of legal personality under international law.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the world's largest regional security organisation, possesses most of the attributes traditionally ascribed to an international organisation, but lacks a constitutive treaty and an established international legal personality. Moreover, OSCE decisions are considered mere political commitments and thus not legally binding. As such, it seems to correspond to the general zeitgeist, in which new, less formal actors and forms of international cooperation gain prominence, while traditional actors and instruments of international law are in stagnation. However, an increasing number of voices - including the OSCE participating states - have been advocating for more formal and autonomous OSCE institutional structures, for international legal personality, or even for the adoption of a constitutive treaty. The book analyses why and how these demands have emerged, critically analyses the reform proposals and provides new arguments for revisiting the OSCE legal framework.