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4 - The League of Nations as an International Organisation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2025

By
Philip Burton  and
Christian J. Tams
General editor
Randall Lesaffer
Edited by
Robert Kolb  and
Momchil Milanov
Randall Lesaffer
Affiliation:
KU Leuven and Tilburg University
Robert Kolb
Affiliation:
Université de Genève
Momchil Milanov
Affiliation:
International Court of Justice
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Summary

The League of Nations was the first permanent international organisation with a general mandate. Its establishment is widely regarded as having had a significant, if elusive, impact upon international law, which became centred on international institutions. These three aspects of the League – its permanence, the generality of its mandate, and the ’institutional turn’ it brought to international law – lie at the heart of the assumed significance of the League for contemporary international lawyers. They are regarded as the League’s principal innovations and central components of its legacy, often without much interrogation and rarely subject to sustained analysis. This chapter offers analysis and interrogation to nuance claims about the League’s innovations. It presents the League as an institution whose grand designs often failed, but which innovated quietly and gradually. Above all, it shifts the focus away from the perceived ’breakthrough’ of 1919, and highlights the evolutionary nature of the League, which adapted throughout its life.

Keywords

League of Nationsinternational organisationinstitutionsinstitutional lawSir Eric Drummond
Type
Chapter
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The Cambridge History of International Law , pp. 100 - 129
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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References

Further Reading

Borowy, Iris, Coming to Terms with World Health. The League of Nations Health Organisation 1921–1946 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 2009).Google Scholar
Carr, Edward H., The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939 (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2001).Google Scholar
Lord Cecil, Robert, A Great Experiment (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1941).Google Scholar
Clavin, Patricia, Securing the World Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corbett, Percy E., ‘What is the League of Nations?’, British Yearbook of International Law, 5 (1924) 119–48.Google Scholar
Dubin, Martin D., ‘Transgovernmental processes in the League of Nations’, International Organization, 37 (1983) 469–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ghébali, Victor-Yves, ‘The League of Nations and functionalism’ in Groom, J.R. and Taylor, Paul (eds.), Functionalism. Theory and Practice in International Relations (London: University of London Press 1975) 141–61.Google Scholar
Gram-Skjoldager, Karen, and Ikonomou, Haakon A., ‘The construction of the League of Nations Secretariat’, International History Review, 41 (2019) 257–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greaves, Harold R.G., The League Committees and World Order. A Study of the Permanent Expert Committees of the League of Nations as an Instrument of International Government (London: Oxford University Press 1931).Google Scholar
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Kennedy, David, ‘The move to institutions’, Cardozo Law Review, 8 (1987) 841–989.Google Scholar
Kolb, Robert (ed.), Commentaire sur le Pacte de la Société des Nations (Brussels: Bruylant 2015).Google Scholar
Kunz, Josef L., ‘The swing of the pendulum: from overestimation to underestimation of international law’, American Journal of International Law, 44(1) (1950) 135–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The League of Nations Starts. An Outline by Its Organisers (London: Macmillan and Co. 1920).Google Scholar
Macfadyen, David, Davies, Michael D.V., Carr, Marilyn Norah and Burley, John, Eric Drummond and His Legacies. The League of Nations and the Beginnings of Global Governance (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2019).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moorhouse, Frank, Dark Palace (Chippendale: MacMillan 2002).Google Scholar
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Oppenheim, Lassa, The League of Nations and Its Problems (London: Longmans 1919).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Ranshofen-Wertheimer, Egon, The International Secretariat. A Great Experiment in International Administration (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 1945).Google Scholar
Tams, Christian, ‘Experiments great and small: centenary reflections on the League of Nations’, German Yearbook of International Law, 62(1) (2019) 93–128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tams, Christian, ‘The League of Nations’, Max Plank Encyclopedia of Public International Law (2007), available at https://opil.ouplaw.com/home/mpil.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
United Nations Library and Graduate Institute of International Studies, The League of Nations in Retrospect (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 1983).Google Scholar
Walters, Francis P., A History of the League of Nations, vols. 1, 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1952).Google Scholar
Zimmern, Alfred, The League of Nations and the Rule of Law (London: Macmillan 1936).Google Scholar

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