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Inserting Visions of Justice into a Contemporary History of International Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2014

Shirley V. SCOTT
Shirley V. SCOTT*
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, [email protected]
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Abstract

The history of international law is often told in terms of the rise and fall of great powers or as a mechanism of colonial subjugation. To the extent that these accounts consider justice, it is usually to demonstrate its absence. This paper points out that justice has been integral to the evolution of international law in the era of the United States. Individuals and members of civil society in the US and Europe have influenced systemic developments in international law through their efforts to realize a vision of justice in interstate relations, their vision being of a body of international law and a world court which together obviate the need for war. To suggest the possibility of an historical narrative constructed around justice is not to deny the validity of other histories focused on inequitable relations of power, but to point to the scope for nuance in the frameworks within which we portray international law and its history.

Type
Articles
Information
Asian Journal of International Law , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , January 2014 , pp. 41 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © Asian Journal of International Law 2014 

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Footnotes

*

Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales. A previous version of this paper was presented in the opening plenary of the First Joint Conference of the Asian Society of International Law and Australian & New Zealand Society of International Law, held at the University of New South Wales on 25 and 26 October 2012.

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