The Impact of International Organizations on International Law addresses how international organizations, particularly those within the UN system, have changed the forms, contents, and effects of international law. Professor Jose Alvarez considers the impact on sovereigns and actions taken by the contemporary Security Council, the UN General Assembly, and UN Specialized Agencies such as the World Health Organization. He considers the diverse functions performed by adjudicators – from judges of the International Criminal Court to arbitrators within the international investment regime. This text raises fundamental questions concerning the future of international law given the challenges international organizations pose to legal positivism, to traditional conceptions of sovereignty, and to the rule of law itself. "A masterfully crafted piece of scholarship that engages with the very raison d’être of international organizations. Written by one of the leading authorities in the field, this book provides an insightful, perspicacious and to-the-point analysis of the impact of international organizations in today’s international legal order while also shedding light on their weaknesses. A must read for all those whose work touches upon the law of international organization." ~Laurence Boisson de Chazournes, University of Geneva "The role of Public International Law, rooted largely in decisions of or relating to international institutions, has been steadily, quietly re-shaping international economic relations and other links between states and regions for decades. There is no greater authority on international organizations within the American law community than Professor José Alvarez. This volume illuminates these trends as well as their limitations and vulnerabilities. It delivers a first-rate, incisive primer on the field." ~David M. Malone, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Rector of the UN University

I. Legal Positivism and its Discontents (1)The Mainstream: Legal Positivism (a)Positivist Treaties (b)Positivist Custom (c) Positivist General Principles (2)The Institutional Challenge to Legal Positivism (a)The Reality of Institutionalization (b)The International Judiciary (c)The Return of Domestic Analogies (d)From State Rules to Process (e)From Process to Inter-disciplinarity (3)Caveats II. The UN Charter Over Time: The Contemporary Security Council (1)What is the UN Charter for? (2)The UN Charter as Positivist Instrument (3)The Council and the "Contracting Out" of Force: Iraq (4)The Council as Extradition Tool (5)The Council and Ad Hoc War Criminal Tribunals (6)The Council and the "Right to Democracy" (7)The Council's "Smart" Sanctions (8)The Council's Global "Legislation" (9)The Council's New Tool: The ICC (10)The Council and "Human Security" III. The Contemporary General Assembly (1)The Assembly and the Sources of International Law (2) The Assembly as Charter Interpreter (3) The Assembly as Human Rights Interpreter and Enforcer (4) The Assembly as Peace and Security Institutional Actor IV. A Contemporary Specialized Agency: The World Health Organization (1) The Origins of the WHO (2) The Fall of the Old IHRs (3)The Rise of the Revised (2005) IHRs (4) The WHO's First Treaty: The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (5) The WHO in Larger Context V. The Main Functions of International Adjudication (1) Introduction (2) The Complex Dispute Settlement Function (3) The Fact-Finding Function (4) The Law-Making Function (5) The Governance Function (6) Conclusions VI. Three Challenges Posed by International Organizations (1)The IO Challenge to Legal Positivism (a)The challenge to the primacy of states and state consent (b)The challenge to the Article 38 source of international obligation (c)The challenge to bindingness (d)Explaining how IO charters "evolve" (2)The IO Challenge to Sovereignty (3)The IO Challenge to the Rule of Law (4)Conclusion.

The Impact of International Organizations on International Lawaddresses how international organizations, particularly those within the UN system, have changed the forms, contents, and effects of international law. Professor Jose Alvarez considers the impact on sovereigns and actions taken by the contemporary Security Council, the UN General Assembly, and UN Specialized Agencies such as the World Health Organization. He considers the diverse functions performed by adjudicators - from judges of the International Criminal Court to arbitrators within the international investment regime. This text raises fundamental questions concerning the future of international law given the challenges international organizations pose to legal positivism, to traditional conceptions of sovereignty, and to the rule of law itself.

Provides a framework for understanding how organizations are set up and the logic behind international organizations law.

In December 2011, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the International Law Commission's articles on the responsibility of international organizations, bringing to conclusion not only nearly ten years of reflection by the Commission, governments and organizations on this specific topic, but also decades of study of the wider subject of international responsibility, which had initially focused on State responsibility. Parallel to this reflection by the Commission, diplomats and public officials, the body of international case-law and literature on the many facets of the topic has steadily been growing. Responsibility of International Organizations: Essays in Memory of Sir Ian Brownlie contributes to the body of international literature by collecting a broad spectrum of different and sometimes differing perspectives from well-known experts in the field, ranging from the bench to the Commission, academia, and the world of in-house counsel. The book is also a memorial to the renowned Sir Ian Brownlie, himself a former Chairman of the International Law Commission who, as a leading scholar and practitioner, greatly contributed to the reflection on international responsibility, including the responsibility of international organizations. Edited by Maurizio Ragazzi, a former pupil of Sir Ian, the book is an ideal companion to International Responsibility Today, a collection of essays on international responsibility which the same editor presented in 2005 in memory of Oscar Schachter, and to which Sir Ian Brownlie had contributed. The essays collected in Responsibility of International Organizations: Essays in Memory of Sir Ian Brownlie, conveniently grouped by the editor under broad areas for the reader's benefit, will be relevant not only to all those interested in this specific subject but also, more generally, to all those engaged in the field of international law and the law of international organizations.

The book explores how international organizations (IOs) have expanded their powers over time without formally amending their founding treaties. IOs intervene in military, financial, economic, political, social, and cultural affairs, and increasingly take on roles not explicitly assigned to them by law. The proposed book will contend that this 'mission creep' has allowed IOs to intervene internationally, most often in the Global South, in a way that has allowed them to recast institutions within and interactions among states, societies, and peoples on a broadly Western, liberal model. Adopting a historical and interdisciplinary, socio-legal approach, it supports this claim through detailed investigations of historical episodes involving three very different organizations: the International Labour Organization in the interwar period; the United Nations in the two decades following the Second World War; and the World Bank from the 1950s through to the 1990s. The book draws on a wide range of original institutional and archival materials, bringing to light little-known aspects of each organization's activities, identifying continuities in the ideas and practices of international governance across the twentieth century, and speaking to a range of pressing theoretical questions in present-day international law and international relations --Front flap of the book.

International Organizations as Law-makers addresses how international organizations with a global reach, such as the UN and the WTO, have changed the mechanisms and reasoning behind the making, implementation, and enforcement of international law. Alvarez argues that existing descriptions of international law and international organizations do not do justice to the complex changes resulting from the increased importance of these institutions after World War II, and especially from changesafter the end of the Cold War. In particular, this book examines the impact of the institutions on international law through the day to day application and interpretation of institutional law, the making of multilateral treaties, and the decisions of a proliferating number of institutionalized dispute settlers. The introductory chapters synthesize and challenge the existing descriptions and theoretical frameworks for addressing international organizations. Part I re-examines the law resulting from the activity of political organs, such as the UN General Assembly and Security Council, technocratic entities within UN specialized agencies, and international financial institutions such as the IMF, and considers their impact on the once sacrosanct 'domestic jurisdiction' of states, as well as on traditional conceptions of the basic sources of international law. Part II assesses the impact of the move towards institutions on treaty-making. It addresses the interplay between negotiating venues and procedures and interstate cooperation and asks whether the involvement of international organizations has made modern treaties 'better'. Part III examines the proliferation of institutionalized dispute settlers, from the UN Secretary General to the WTO's dispute settlement body, and re-examines their role as both settlers of disputes and law-makers. The final chapter considers the promise and the perils of the turn to formal institutions for the making of the new kinds of 'soft' and 'hard' global law, including the potential for forms of hegemonic international law.