Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-669899f699-tzmfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-06T19:02:31.544Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - International Law at the Time of the League of Nations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2025

Randall Lesaffer
Affiliation:
KU Leuven and Tilburg University
Robert Kolb
Affiliation:
Université de Genève
Momchil Milanov
Affiliation:
International Court of Justice
Get access

Summary

First, this chapter provides a general framework of international law at the time of the League of Nations, taking into account the practice of international law; second, a sample of the international legal literature of the period concerning a number of key and recurrent topics is offered; finally, a few historical treatments of international law that were recounted at the time are briefly summarised to show that certain developments in practice and in theory had repercussions also in the historical conceptualisations of international law.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Further Reading

Allain, J., ‘Slavery and the League of Nations: Ethiopia as a civilised nation’, Journal of the History of International Law, 8 (2006) 213–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baer, George W., Test Case. Italy, Ethiopia, and the League of Nations (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press 1976).Google Scholar
Bull, Hedley, and Watson, Adam (eds.), The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1985).Google Scholar
Butler, Geoffrey G., and Maccoby, S., The Development of International Law (London, New York and Toronto: Longmans, Green & Co. 1928).Google Scholar
Carr, Edward H., The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919–1939. An Introduction to the Study on International Relations (London: Macmillan 1939; 2nd edn reprinted by Houndmills: Palgrave 2001).Google Scholar
Chorbajian, Levon, ‘“They brought it on themselves and it never happened”: denial to 1939’ in Demirdjian, Alexis (ed.), The Armenian Genocide Legacy (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan UK 2016) 167–82.Google Scholar
Descamps, Baron M., ‘Le droit international nouveau: L’influence de la condamnation de la guerre sur l’évolution juridique internationale’, Recueil des cours, 31 (1930) 399555.Google Scholar
Finnemore, Martha, National Interests in International Society (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, H. Wood, ‘Review: The Three Stages in the Evolution of the Law of Nations’, American Journal of International Law, 15 (1921) 492–3.Google Scholar
Gaunt, David, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors. Muslim–Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War i (Piscataway: Gorgias Press 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaurier, Dominique, Histoire du droit international. Auteurs, doctrines et développement de l’Antiquité à l’aube de la période contemporaine (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes 2005).Google Scholar
Gong, Gerrit W., The Standard of Civilization in International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1984).Google Scholar
Gorodetsky, Gabriel, Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1991. A Retrospective (London: Routledge 1994).Google Scholar
Greenman, Kathryn, Orford, Anne, Saunders, Anna and Tzouvala, Ntina (eds.), Revolutions in International Law. The Legacies of 1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2021).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grewe, Wilhelm G., The Epochs of International Law (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 2000); original: Epochen der Völkerrechtsgeschichte (Baden-Baden: Nomos 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hackworth, Green H., Digest of International Law (8 vols., Washington, DC: Government Printing Office 1940–1944), vol. 3.Google Scholar
Harley, John E., The League of Nations and the New International Law (New York: Oxford University Press 1921).Google Scholar
Hazard, John N., ‘The Soviet Union and international law’, Soviet Studies, 1 (1950) 189–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hicks, Frederick C., The New World Order (Garden City and New York: Doubleday, Page & Company 1920).Google Scholar
Hill, David J., ‘Review: The Development of International Law’, American Journal of International Law, 23 (1929) 710–11.Google Scholar
Hoyle, Mark S.W., Mixed Courts of Egypt (London: Graham & Trotman 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jitta, Josephus, The Renovation of International Law on the Basis of a Juridical Community of Mankind Systematically Developed (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1919).Google Scholar
Keene, Edward, Beyond the Anarchical Society. Grotius, Colonialism and Order in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelsen, Hans, Reine Rechtslehre [1934] (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2008), English translation: Introduction to the Problems of Legal Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keynes, John M., The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (London: Macmillan 1936).Google Scholar
Kleinschmidt, Harald, Geschichte des Völkerrechts in Krieg und Frieden (Tübingen: Francke Verlag 2013).Google Scholar
Kolb, Robert (ed.), Commentaire sur le Pacte de la Société des Nations (Brussels: Bruylant 2015).Google Scholar
Korff, Serge A., ‘Introduction à l’histoire du droit international public’, Recueil des cours, 1 (1923) 123.Google Scholar
Korff, Serge A., ‘An introduction to the history of international law’, American Journal of International Law, 18 (1924) 246–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koskenniemi, Martti, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations. The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002).Google Scholar
Koskenniemi, Martti, ‘History of international law, World War i to World War ii’ in Wolfrum, Rüdiger (ed.), The Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, vol. 4 (2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012) 925–34.Google Scholar
Kulski, W.W., ‘The Soviet interpretation of international law’, American Journal of International Law, 49 (1955) 518–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lauterpacht, Hersch, ‘The Covenant as the higher law’, British Yearbook of International Law, 17 (1936) 5465.Google Scholar
Lauterpacht, Hersch, ‘The Grotian tradition in international law’, British Yearbook of International Law, 23 (1946) 153.Google Scholar
Lauterpacht, Hersch, Private Law Sources and Analogies of International Law (London: Longmans, Green and Co. 1927).Google Scholar
Leonhard, Jörn, Pandora’s Box. A History of the First World War (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press 2018).Google Scholar
Macartney, Carlile A., Refugees. The Work of the League (London: League of Nations Union 1930).Google Scholar
Mainetti, Vittorio, and Dennis, Martin, ‘Article 18’ in Kolb, Robert (ed.), Commentaire sur le Pacte de la Société des Nations (Brussels: Bruylant 2015) 733–62.Google Scholar
Nathan, Manfred, The Renascence of International Law (London: Sweet & Maxwell 1925).Google Scholar
Neff, Stephen C., Justice among Nations. A History of International Law (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press 2014).Google Scholar
Nippold, Otfried, The Development of International Law after the World War (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1923).Google Scholar
Portmann, Roland, Legal Personality in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rassam, A.Y., ‘Contemporary forms of slavery and the evolution of the prohibition of slavery and the slave trade under customary international law’, Virginia Journal of International Law, 39 (1999) 303–52.Google Scholar
Redslob, Robert, Histoire des grands principes du droit des gens depuis l’antiquité jusqu’à la veille de la grande guerre (Paris: Rousseau 1923).Google Scholar
Reeves, Jesse S., ‘The codification of the law of territorial waters’, American Journal of International Law, 24 (1930) 486–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reinsch, Paul S., ‘International unions and their administration’, American Journal of International Law, 1 (1907) 579623.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, John Morris, Modern History. From the European Age to the New Global Era (New York: Oxford University Press 2008).Google Scholar
Saul, Ben, ‘The legal response of the League of Nations to terrorism’, Journal of International Criminal Justice, 4 (2006) 78102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmitt, Carl, Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum [1950] (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 2012), English translation: The Nomos of the Earth (New York: Telos Press Publishing 2006) 259–80.Google Scholar
Schmitt, Carl, Die Wendung zum diskriminierenden Kriegsbegriff (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 1938, English translation: The Turn to the Discriminating Concept of War, in C. Schmitt, Writings on War (Cambridge: Polity Press 2011) 3074.Google Scholar
Spiermann, Ole, International Legal Argument in the Permanent Court of International Justice. The Rise of the International Judiciary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turns, David, ‘The Stimson doctrine of non-recognition: its historical genesis and influence on contemporary international law’, Chinese Journal of International Law, 2 (2003) 105–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tzouvala, Ntina, Capitalism as Civilization. A History of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Vollenhoven, Cornelis, Du droit de paix. De iure pacis (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1932).Google Scholar
van Vollenhoven, Cornelis, The Three Stages in the Evolution of the Law of Nations (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1919).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vinogradoff, Paul, Historical Types of International Law. Lectures Delivered in the University of Leiden (Bibliotheca Visseriana dissertationum ius internationale illustrantium, vol. 1, I, Leiden: Brill 1923).Google Scholar
Walters, Francis P., A History of the League of Nations (London, New York and Toronto: Oxford University Press 1952).Google Scholar
Wehberg, Hans, The Outlawry of War (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 1931).Google Scholar
Whelan, Anthony, ‘Wilsonian self-determination and the Versailles settlement’, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 43 (1994) 99115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, John Fischer, Chapters on Current International Law and the League of Nations (London, New York and Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co. 1929).Google Scholar
Ziegler, Karl-Heinz, Völkerrechtsgeschichte (2nd edn, Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck 2007).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×