Janis.

What happens under international law if a state perishes due to rising sea levels without a successor state being created? Will the state cease to exist? What would this mean for its population? Have international law and globalization progressed enough to protect the people thus affected, or does international law still depend on the territorial state when it comes to protecting entire populations? Exploring these issues, this book provides answers to these pressing questions. Focusing on small island states as actors in the international community, it evaluates the challenges that the state as a subject of international law faces in general from globalization and humanization, and what this means for small island states threatened by rising seas. Highlighting the experience of the indigenous peoples of small island states as collectives, and to the individuals living in these states, the book addresses fundamental questions of general state theory and international law, drawing on an extensive body of source material. As rising sea levels present an increasingly pressing threat to small island states, this book highlights the importance of international protection of the individual and the capacity of international organizations to act within existing international law. It identifies pressing problems where immediate action is required and argues that, in future, the responsibility for protecting individuals could shift to the international community, if a sinking island state can no longer protect its population on its own.

Built on the theme “history, culture and international law”, this special course gives a comprehensive review of China’s contemporary perspective and practice of international law in the past 60 years, with its focus on the recent 30 years when China is gradually integrated into international legal system through its opening up and economic reform process.

This is the fourth in the Series of Select Proceedings of the European Society of International Law (ESIL) featuring the most important and interesting papers presented at the Fifth Biennial Conference on 'Regionalism and International Law', organised by ESIL and the University of Valencia in 2012. As usual, the best papers from that conference have been re-written, edited and drawn together by the two editors to present a perspective on what is a flourishing forum for the discussion of new ideas and scholarship on international law.

This book is a timely contribution to the present discussion of a constitutional reform of the United Nations, a discussion rekindled by the end of the cold War and the significant involvement of the UN in international peacemaking and peacekeeping since the Kuwait crisis. Like the new debate, the work focuses on the Security Council, its composition and possible enlargement, its decision-making process and competences, and its relationship with the General Assembly and the International Court of Justice. Particular regard is given to the right of veto of the permanent members of the Security Council, which is seen as the central, and most problematic, feature of the present constitution of the UN. The work describes and analyzes the reform discussion as it has taken place at the UN since 1991. The different proposals made by governments, NGOs and individual scholars are evaluated by applying a number of standards and concepts ensuing from a perception of the UN Charter as constitution of the international community. Thus, the study advances a comprehensive constitutional theory of the UN and redefines the place of the Charter in contemporary international law.

Evaluates the challenges and changes that the Belt and Road Initiative brings to China in international law and governance.

How can Third World experiences of colonialism and statehood be expressed within the confines of the International Court of Justice? How has the discourse of international law developed to reflect postcolonial realities of universal statehood? In a close and critical reading of four territorial disputes spanning the Arab World, Burgis explores the extent to which international law can be used to speak for and speak to non-European experiences of authority over territory. The book draws on recent, critical international legal scholarship to question the ability of contemporary, international adjudication to address Third World grievances from the past. A comparative analysis of the cases suggests that international law remains a discourse only capable of capturing a limited range of non-European experiences during and after colonialism.