Political Technology And The Erosion Of The Rule Of Law

This timely volume by distinguished scholar Günter Frankenberg offers a sophisticated analysis and sharp critique of the reactions of nations such as the US, Great Britain and Germany to perceived terrorist threats, organized crime actions and other political emergencies that have occurred in recent years.

The Netherlands Yearbook of International Law was first published in 1970. It offers a forum for the publication of scholarly articles of a more general nature in the area of public international law including the law of the european Union. One of the key functions or purposes of international law (and law in general for that matter) is to provide long-term stability and legal certainty. Yet, international legal rules may also function as tools to deal with non-permanent or constantly changing issues and rather than stable, international law may have to be flexible or adaptive. Prima facie, one could think of two main types of temporary aspects relevant from the perspective of international law. First, the nature of the object addressed by international law or the ‘problem’ that international law aims to address may be inherently temporary (temporary objects). Second, a subject of international law may be created for a specific period of time, after the elapse of which this entity ceases to exist (temporary subjects). These types of temporariness raise several questions from the perspective of international law, which are hardly addressed from a more conceptual perspective. This volume of the Netherlands Yearbook of International Law aims to do exactly that by asking the question of how international law reacts to various types of temporary issues. Put differently, where does international law stand on the continuum of predictability and pragmatism when it comes to temporary issues or institutions?

This book addresses the relevance of the state of exception for the analysis of law, while reflecting on the deeper symbolic and jurisprudential significance of the coalescence between law and force. The concept of the state of exception has become a central topos in political and legal philosophy as well as in critical theory. The theoretical apparatus of the state of exception sharply captures the uneasy relationship between law, life and politics in the contemporary global setting, while also challenging the comforting narratives that uncritically connect democracy with the tradition of the rule of law. Drawing on critical legal theory, continental jurisprudence, political philosophy and history, this book explores the genealogy of the concept of the state of exception and reflects on its legal embodiment in past and present contexts – including Weimar and Nazi Germany, contemporary Europe and Turkey. In doing so, it explores the disruptive force of the exception for legal and political thought, as it recuperates its contemporary critical potential. The book will be of interest to students and scholars in the field of jurisprudence, philosophy and critical legal theory.

This invaluable and timely book provides a comprehensive “Conflict Prevention and Friction Analysis (CPFA) Model” for researching comparative law in our increasingly technology-led legal and economic order. It provides an in-depth examination of practical case studies, showcasing the real-world application of quantitative methods and theoretical approaches for analysing legal issues.

This book examines the problem of constitutional change in times of crisis. Divided into five main parts, it both explores and interrogates how public law manages change in periods of extraordinary pressure on the constitution. In Part I, “Emergency, Exception and Normalcy,” the contributors discuss the practices and methods that could be used to help legitimize the use of emergency powers without compromising the constitutional principles that were created during a period of normalcy. In Part II, “Terrorism and Warfare,” the contributors assess how constitutions are interpreted during times of war, focusing on the tension between individual rights and safety. Part III, “Public Health, Financial and Economic Crises,” considers how constitutions change in response to crises that are neither political in the conventional sense nor violent, which also complicates how we evaluate constitutional resilience in times of stress. Part IV, “Constitutionalism for Divided Societies,” then investigates the pressure on constitutions designed to govern diverse, multi-national populations, and how constitutional structures can facilitate stability and balance in these states. Part V, titled “Constitution-Making and Constitutional Change,” highlights how constitutions are transformed or created anew during periods of tension. The book concludes with a rich contextual discussion of the pressing challenges facing constitutions in moments of extreme pressure. Chapter “Public Health Emergencies and Constitutionalism Before COVID-19: Between the National and the International” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This monograph makes a seminal contribution to existing literature on the importance of Roman law in the development of political thought in Europe. In particular it examines the expression 'dominus mundi', following it through the texts of the medieval jurists – the Glossators and Post-Glossators – up to the political thought of Hobbes. Understanding the concept of dominus mundi sheds light on how medieval jurists understood ownership of individual things; it is more complex than it might seem; and this book investigates these complexities. The book also offers important new insights into Thomas Hobbes, especially with regard to the end of dominus mundi and the replacement by Leviathan. Finally, the book has important relevance for contemporary political theory. With fading of political diversity Monateri argues “that the actual setting of globalisation represents the reappearance of the Ghost of the Dominus Mundi, a political refoulé – repressed – a reappearance of its sublime nature, and a struggle to restore its universal legitimacy, and take its place.” In making this argument, the book adds an important original vision to current debates in legal and political philosophy.

This important book offers an ambitious and interdisciplinary vision of how private international law (or the conflict of laws) might serve as a heuristic for re-working our general understandings of legality in directions that respond to ever-deepening global ecological crises. Unusual in legal scholarship, the author borrows (in bricolage mode) from the work of Bruno Latour, alongside indigenous cosmologies, extinction theories and Levinassian phenomenology, to demonstrate why this field's specific frontier location at the outpost of the law – where it is viewed from the outside as obscure and from the inside as a self-contained normative world – generates its potential power to transform law generally and globally. Combining pragmatic and pluralist theory with an excavation of 'shadow' ecological dimensions of law, the author, a recognised authority within the field as conventionally understood, offers a truly global view. Put simply, it is a generational magnum opus. All international and transnational lawyers, be they in the private or public field, should read this book.

This book proposes a normative framework specifically designed for the complex and legally uncertain time period between armed conflicts and peace. As such, it contributes both to the furthering of a jus post bellum framework, and to enhanced legal clarity in complex and legally uncertain environments. This, in turn, contributes to strengthened protection engagements, and thus to improved prospects of enabling sustainable peace and security in both national and international perspectives. The book offers a novel but persuasive argument for a legal framework specific for transitional environments. Such legal framework, it is argued, is warranted in order to enable legal clarity to contemporary and outstanding legal issues, as well as to furthering peace efforts in complex environments. The legal framework suggested proposes a dividing line between applicable legal frameworks that, it is submitted, enhances both legal clarity on protection engagements and the quest for sustainable peace. The framework proposed is founded on a legal analysis of the protective nature and function of law. It thus provides a rare but important perspective on law that is of value in the quest for sustainable peace and security. The research draws uniquely on both contemporary legal debates, and on peace and conflict research. It does so in order to enable legal analysis that is both legally sound, as well as appropriate and adequate in today’s peace and security realities. The book provides a valuable resource for academics, researchers and policy-makers in the areas of Public International Law, International Humanitarian Law, International Human Rights Law, (the law of) Peace Operations, and Peace and Security Studies.