This book asks whether sovereignty can guarantee international equality by exploring the discourses of sovereignty and their reliance on the notions of civilisation and savagery in two historical colonial encounters: the French explorations of Canada in the 16th century and the domestic troubles linked to the Wars of Religion. Presenting the concept of ‘civilised sovereignty’, Mathieu reveals the interplay between the domestic and external claims to sovereignty, and offers a dynamic analysis of the theory and practice of the concept. Based on extensive archival research, this book provides an in-depth intellectual picture of the theory and practice of sovereignty in early modern France by focusing on the discourses deployed by French political theorists. Mathieu applies performativity in order to denaturalise these discourses of statehood and reveals how the domestic and international constructions of sovereignty feed into one another and equally rely on appeals to civilisation and savagery. Overall, the book questions the ‘myth of sovereignty as equality’ and reflects on the persistence of this association despite the overwhelming empirical evidence that it institutes international hierarchies and inequalities. Representing a major intervention in the existing IR debates about sovereignty, this book will be a valuable resource for researchers working on issues of sovereignty and equality in IR.

Peremptory Norms of General International Law (Jus Cogens): Disquisitions and Dispositions is a collection of contributions on various aspects of jus cogens in international law.

The year 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the United Nations Organisation, and the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Friendly Relations Declaration, which states the fundamental principles of the international legal order. In commemoration, some of the world's most prominent international law scholars from all continents have come together to offer a comprehensive study of the fundamental principles of international law. Each chapter in this volume reflects decades of experience, work and reflection by the most authoritative voices of the field. At the same time, the book is an invitation to end narrow specialisation and re-engage with the wider body of rules and processes that lie at the foundations of the international legal order.

Xiaodong Yang examines the issue of jurisdictional immunities of States and their property in foreign domestic courts.

Explains how actors control access to international resources, creating a stratified international system of political equals and unequals.

International Law is both an introduction to the subject and a critical consideration of its central themes and debates. The opening chapters of the book explain how international law underpins the international political and economic system by establishing the basic principle of the independence of States, and their right to choose their own political, economic, and cultural systems. Subsequent chapters then focus on considerations that limit national freedom of choice (e.g. human rights, the interconnected global economy, the environment). Through the organizing concepts of territory, sovereignty, and jurisdiction the book shows how international law seeks to achieve an established set of principles according to which the power to make and enforce policies is distributed among States.

In 2011, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1973, authorizing its member states to take measures to protect Libyan civilians from Muammar Gadhafi’s forces. In invoking the “responsibility to protect,” the resolution draws on the principle that sovereign states are responsible and accountable to the international community for the protection of their populations and that the international community can act to protect populations when national authorities fail to do so. The idea that sovereignty includes the responsibility to protect is often seen as a departure from the classic definition, but it actually has deep historical roots. In Sovereignty and the Responsibility to Protect, Luke Glanville argues that this responsibility extends back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and that states have since been accountable for this responsibility to God, the people, and the international community. Over time, the right to national self-governance came to take priority over the protection of individual liberties, but the noninterventionist understanding of sovereignty was only firmly established in the twentieth century, and it remained for only a few decades before it was challenged by renewed claims that sovereigns are responsible for protection. Glanville traces the relationship between sovereignty and responsibility from the early modern period to the present day, and offers a new history with profound implications for the present.