This book offers a multidisciplinary approach to the study of the concept of sovereignty. This book outlines the origins, context and evolution of the concept of sovereignty as an essential attribute of the modern territorial State since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The book identifies two competing traditions of the concept of sovereignty; the tradition inaugurated by Jean Bodin in 1576 in his work The Six Books of the Commonwealth and another that started with Johannes Althusius in 1603, considered the father of federal theory, in his less known work Politica. In order to understand the concept of sovereignty, it is necessary to understand the constitutional rules of each international system and the fact that the States are the primary polities in the international arena. The rise of International Organizations and the increasing institutionalization of the international system challenges this state-centric world, considering their exercise of sovereign powers. Following authors such as Daniel Elazar, the book discusses the importance of federalism as political theory, which offers a different understanding of the concept of sovereignty. The book discusses the European Union as a paradigmatic case of a postmodern confederation, which challenges the notion of sovereignty as an absolute and exclusive statehood attribute. Furthermore, the reconceptualization of sovereignty in International Law should consider the rise of regional and functional legal orders, the different understandings of sovereignty offered by the federalist tradition and the processes of deterritorialization and disaggregation of authority. The book concludes with the idea that concept of sovereignty in International Law should be seen as a flexible concept which is not an exclusive attribute of the modern territorial state. This book is required reading for all interested in the history and the evolution of the concept of sovereignty.

The European Union is facing today the greatest crisis since its creation. Brexit could mean not only the reversal of its steady enlargement—from 6 to 28 member states—but also the beginning of an inexorable decline leading to its disintegration. However, few today seem to recollect that it was precisely the British who were the first to promulgate the political culture which inspired the European Union’s construction—democracy and federalism—and the first who tried to realise, in June 1940, a European federation on the basis of an Anglo-French union. This volume traces the fundamental stages of the European unification process, placing it in relation to the wider process of world economic and political integration. In particular, it analyses the historical significance of the European Revolution, which is identified in the overcoming of the nation state—namely the modern political formula which institutionalised the political division of mankind—and the birth of the first truly international state. The universal historical significance of the European Revolution lies in its exportability—as for the other great European revolutions—and, therefore, its potential as progressively extensible to all the states of the planet. Europe was indeed the first region of the world where the barriers between national states fell, and a post-national political identity emerged, complementary to national political identities. It is, in fact, in the context of the European Union that democracy beyond the borders of the nation state has first been realized, constituting a guiding principle for global governance.

based on author's thesis (doctoral - Universitèat Basel, 2016) issued under title: The extraterritorial protection of animals: admissibility and possibilities of the application of national animal welfare standards to animals in foreign countries.

The current system of international law is experiencing profound transformations. Indeed, the simultaneous processes of globalization combined with the disintegration of international systems of governance and law-making pose complex challenges for legal scholarship. The doctrinal response to these challenges has been theorized within two seemingly contradictory discourses in international law: fragmentation and constitutionalisation. This book takes an innovative approach to international law, viewing the processes of the fragmentation and constitutionalisation as being profoundly interconnected and reflective of each other. It brings together a select group of contributors, including both established and emerging scholars and practitioners, in order to explore the ways in which the problems of fragmentation and constitutionalisation are viscerally linked one to the other and thus mutually conditioning and stimulating. The book considers the theory and practice of international law looking at the two phenomena in relation to the various fields of international law such as international criminal law, cultural heritage law and international environmental law.

Responsibility to Protect: Research, bibliography, background. Supplementary volume to the Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty

This book explores the emergence of an anarchic states-system in the twentieth-century Arab world. Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Arab nationalist movements first considered establishing a unified regional arrangement to take the empire's place and present a common front to outside powers. But over time different Arab leaderships abandoned this project and instead adopted policies characteristic of self-interested, territorially limited states. In his explanation of this phenomenon, the author shifts attention away from older debates about the origins and development of Arab nationalism and analyzes instead how different nationalist leaderships changed the ways that they carried on diplomatic and strategic relations. He situates this shift in the context of influential sociological theories of state formation, while showing how labor movements and other forms of popular mobilization shaped the origins of the regional states-system.