The Supremacy Of The State In International Law

This edition brings the treatment of statehood in the field of international law up to date. It retains a wealth of historical material and introduces new problems such as the disposition of territory in Kosovo and East Timor, claims for secession in Chechnya and Quebec and devolution in Scotland.

The Act of State Doctrine holds that a state is legally supreme within its own boundaries and its sovereign is wholly immune to the judgments of other nations. The acts that the sovereign power's agents perform as part of their official duties and responsibilities cannot be called into question in the courts of another nation. If a state possesses not final and complete power over its own territory and citizens it is a dependency, a colony, or an occupied area. As nations moved into the modern world nations began to have second thoughts about maintaining and supporting sovereign absolutism. This study investigates past, current, and emerging meanings of the act of state doctrine. It also examines exceptions to the act of state doctrine.

The more international law, taken as a global answer to global problems, intrudes into domestic legal systems, the more it takes on the role and function of domestic law. This raises a separation of powers question regarding law–making powers. This book considers that specific issue. In contrast to other studies on domestic courts applying international law, its constitutional orientation focuses on the presumptions concerning the distribution of state power. It collects and examines relevant decisions regarding treaties and customary international law from four leading legal systems, the US, the UK, France, and the Netherlands. Those decisions reveal that institutional and conceptual allegiances to constitutional structures render it difficult for courts to see their mandates and powers in terms other than exclusively national. Constitutionalism generates an inevitable dualism between international law and national law, one which cannot necessarily be overcome by express constitutional provisions accommodating international law. Valuable for academics and practitioners in the fields of international and constitutional law.

Analyses national practices on conflicts between international law and national fundamental principles with a comparative perspective.

The Function of Law in the International Community, first published in 1933, is one of the seminal works on international law. Its author, Sir Hersch Lauterpacht, is widely considered to be one of the great international lawyers of the 20th century. It continues to influence those studying and working in international law today. This republication once again makes this book available to scholars and students in the field. It features a new introduction by Professor Martti Koskenniemi, examining the world in which the Function of Law was originally published and the lasting legacy of this classic work.