text:
Public International Law

Endorsements
Public international law scholarship has since the days of its “founding fathers” been dominated by single authored sums. The biases inherent in such a model have become all too obvious, which is why Public International Law: A Multi-Perspective Approach is just the collection we needed. International law will only be reconfgured in decades to come if the extent to which it has meant very different things for different people is recognized in textbooks themselves. We owe the diversity of our students this very diversity of perspectives.

 * Frédéric Mégret, Full Professor, Co-director of the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, Hans & Tamar Oppenheimer Chair in Public International Law, McGill University Put together with both care and fair, featuring terrifc voices both seasoned and new, covering both key concepts and contemporary concerns, taking us from history to future, deep sea to outer space, cores to peripheries, and open access to boot, this is a delightful cocktail of a textbook. I look forward to many happy hours with it.

 * Surabhi Ranganathan, Professor of International Law and Director of Postgraduate Education, University of Cambridge

Preface
The teaching of international law is governed by exclusions. Although international law – like no other feld of law – is shaped by global, universal aspirations, its teaching is provincial fnancially, personally, geographically, and epistemologically. With this perspective in mind, we decided to initiate this textbook on public international law in spring 2021. It has been created within the fabric of OpenRewi. Initially, OpenRewi, which stands for open rechtswissenschaft (German: ‘legal scholarship’ or ‘legal science’), was founded in Germany and focused on publishing German textbooks and casebooks. The idea behind the initiative is to use the possibilities the internet ofers to contribute to reducing some of the existing exclusions: today it is possible to publish digitally and make content available at no cost to everyone around the globe with an internet connection. Accordingly, all teaching materials created by OpenRewi are published as Open Educational Resources (OER). This allows students and teachers to freely access, use, modify, and share these resources independent of institutional afliation, region, and economic status.

However, a perhaps even greater need for OER exists in the feld of international law, with huge global disparities existing in terms of access to high quality teaching materials. It is not farfetched to say that the potential ofered by the internet to make knowledge widely accessible has not been realised in international law. If textbooks are available digitally, they remain behind a paywall. Indeed, to the best of our knowledge, not a single international law textbook exists which is freely accessible and reusable in line with Open Access terms.

Amid a global pandemic and after numerous all-too-familiar video conferences, we thus decided to fll this gap. Timidly and uncertainly, we published a call for authors. This call aimed at overcoming legal and technical barriers to create the frst-ever collaboratively written and openly accessible textbook in international law. It quickly turned out that our worries were unfounded. Over 100 authors, among them both established scholars and younger researchers, responded with their ideas. It became obvious that the idea of an open textbook hit a nerve, and that many shared our feeling that teaching materials in international law need to become more accessible. However, it was evident to us that Open Access has to mean more than facilitating access. What need to be ‘opened’ are also processes of knowledge production and scholarship themselves.

The approach we thus opted for in elaborating this textbook is refected in its title: we deliberately chose a multi-perspectivist approach. With this, we mean that the textbook aims to represent a diversity of perspectives in at least three ways: intellectual approaches, gender, and regional representation. We were partially successful in this respect. Never before have so many critical scholars contributed to a textbook on public international law. Never before have authors of an international law textbook lived on all inhabited continents. Never before have more women and non-binary people than men contributed to an international law textbook as authors. However, we must also concede and disclose that we did, to some extent, reproduce existing power structures and hierarchies when selecting authors. We have shared our call for authors on platforms that are primarily read by people from the Global North. We selected authors based on proposals that seemed familiar to us in terms of language and thinking. Only one author based at an institution on the African continent and one Chinese author contributed to our textbook. The textbook is published in English and therefore requires a certain language profciency, which presupposes economic and cultural capital that is unequally distributed globally. Furthermore, selections also cause rejections, and so we would like to express gratitude to all unsuccessful applicants once again.

Multi-perspectivism for us also meant designing the writing process in ways that allowed for inclusivity. After we had selected the authors, further video conferences followed in which we discussed the structure, content, and approach of the textbook as a collective. The result of these discussions was the table of contents and didactic concept of this textbook described in more detail below. Based on this, all authors could choose their desired chapters. Like other OpenRewi projects, we used the Wikimedia Foundation’s open platform Wikibooks to create our textbook. The platform enables the free creation and publication of digital books. Each chapter of our book has been allocated its own page on Wikibooks. This allows readers, authors, and editors to track, comment, and correct all developments of a chapter.

The goal of this multi-perspectivist approach to producing a textbook consists in not only reproducing conventional knowledge about international law but also allowing students to question it. Multi-perspectivism, therefore, also means departing from the standard of the textbook genre. The genre of the textbook has been one of the main tools through which a particular perspective – the perspective of a white, European man – has been allowed to portray itself as objective and thus usurp the place of the universal. Three main features of the book’s composition are supposed to work to break up this standard narrative: First, even though there is a distinct part covering history, theory, and methodology, the chapters in this part are only supposed to deliver the relevant background knowledge to be able to understand the historical and theoretical underpinnings of each chapter. Most chapters contain extensive historical and theoretical contextualisations themselves instead of just reproducing the standard textbook narrative. Second, chapters on diferent approaches and methodologies are relatively detailed and focused on critical approaches. While it may be confusing for students to some degree to be introduced in relative detail (compared to other textbooks) to, for example, Feminist, Marxist, and Third World Approaches to International Law, and with interdisciplinarity, without frst being introduced to the core concepts that usually stand at the beginning of a textbook, this confusion is not accidental but calculated. The idea is that students will encounter ways of looking critically at the standard way of conceiving international law before they encounter this standard narrative – not the other way around, as is most often the case. Third, and maybe most obviously, the book is not pretending to ofer a single perspective that could be framed as universal. The authors who have contributed to the book come from diverse backgrounds and have received their professional formation in diferent ways. While we have, of course, strived for a degree of cohesiveness that allows students to work with this book as a coherent whole rather than as a set of loosely connected individual chapters, we have not imposed a single perspective or approach on our diverse authors. Their individual voice and perspective are palpable, and students will be able to appreciate each of these perspectives as what it is – a perspective that they can take as a reliable source for the knowledge and the skills they need in order to be able to craft an international legal argument but still one perspective that they are invited to question.

However, some limitations remain. Writing a textbook as a collective composed of a majority of female and non-binary scholars and of many scholars located in or having a diasporic or ancestral connection to the Global South does not eliminate all the problems of exclusion and hierarchisation inherent in writing a textbook. Writing a textbook that counts as an instance of the genre involves reproducing, at least to some degree, the standard textbook narrative associated with mainstream international law. Reproducing this standard narrative is not only a matter of complying with the conventions of the genre, but it also has connections to questions of how to contribute to a profession of international law that is more accessible. Access to the profession is mediated through examinations that students have to pass. These examinations, in most non-elite places of higher education, will ask students to reproduce the standard textbook narrative in some form. Therefore, where this textbook adheres to this narrative it does so not in spite of but because of the fact that this is the narrative that has established itself as dominant – not through intellectual persuasion but through imperialism and hegemonic moves. Part of the dominant narrative this textbook knowingly reproduces is the distinction between the diferent parts of the textbook, split into a frst part covering ‘History, Theory, and Methods’, a second part devoted to ‘General International Law’, and a third part introducing students to ‘Specialised Fields’ of international law. Nothing beyond the conventions of the feld provides an explanation for why, for example, international human rights law counts as a specialised feld whereas the law of immunities or diplomatic relations pertains to ‘general international law’. The same can be said for many aspects refected in the composition and content of the book. We hope, however, that the multi-perspectivist approach can allow students to not only familiarise themselves with the standard textbook narrative but to see its contingency from the beginning and therefore embark on their international law journey with their critical minds sharpened.

From the beginning, we wanted to publish the textbook in a printed version as well, with an established publisher, in order to raise its visibility, and to ofer its readership a further seal of quality in addition to the open peer review process. After some informational contact with well-known publishers since the beginning of 2023, we were incredibly grateful when Routledge got back to us with enthusiasm. From that point on, it was clear to us that we wanted to publish the textbook with Routledge. We are sincerely grateful to Emily Kindleysides and Chloe Herbert at Routledge for their professional, kind, and efcient support. We received fnancial support from the German Centre for Integration and Migration Studies (DeZIM) with funds from the German Ministry of Family Afairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. This fnancial support has made it possible for us to keep this publication Open Access. We therefore remain deeply grateful to DeZIM, particularly to Dr. Noa Ha, Volker Knoll-Hoyer, Dr. Cihan Sinanoglu, and Benjamin Schwarze. Eva Vogel has been immensely helpful, supporting us in fnishing the manuscript and providing feedback from a student’s perspective.

Structure
Bringing together a unique range of perspectives from around the world and from different theoretical approaches, this textbook introduces both the overarching questions and doctrines of public international law, as well as the specialised sub-felds. These include emerging felds such as international law in cyberspace, international migration law, and the international climate regime. The book includes numerous case examples, references to debates and controversies in the literature, and focus sections addressing topics in more depth. Featuring an array of pedagogical features, including learning objectives, suggested further reading and resources, and interactive exercises, this book is ideal for students studying this feld for the frst time and also offers something new for students who would like to deepen their knowledge via a diverse and engaging range of perspectives.

Fundamentally, our textbook targets students encountering these subjects for the first time. However, each chapter also incorporates advanced content tailored to graduate students or those pursuing doctoral studies, at least introductory. Additionally, the inclusion of further readings in every chapter serves as a resource not only for students but also for teachers seeking supplementary materials for their courses.

Our aim is to imbue the textbook with greater interactivity and utility while reimagining traditional forms of knowledge dissemination. The integration of interactive exercises serves to not only engage students more effectively but also to provide them with opportunities for self-assessment following class participation or textbook reading. Drawing from our collective experiences as teachers, and informed by student feedback, we recognize the value students place on such interactive elements.

About the Book
This book is meant to be a living document. You will find invitations and hints for collaboration on every single page. We would be happy if you get in contact with the authors and contribute with comments. How to do that is described here. More information about the project OpenRewi - Initiative for an Open Legal Science can be found on our website.

This book is licensed under [|Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0]. You may copy, distribute, or modify content from our book in any medium and format. However, you must give us appropriate credit. Also, if you modify our content, the modification must also be licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. You will find more information in our Instructions for Reuse. If you have any questions, please feel free to [mailto:pil@openrewi.org contact us].

This book is also published by Routledge. It can be purchased as a printed book or [https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003451327/public-international-law-raffaela-kunz-max-milas-sué-gonzález-hauck?_gl=1*onf6cf*_ga*MTc4MTk0NzAyMS4xNzA5NzI5MzIz*_ga_0HYE8YG0M6*MTcxMDMyMTAwMy43LjEuMTcxMDMyMjE5OC4wLjAuMA.. downloaded].

title: Public International Law


text:
User:Ebyrc/sandbox

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User:Ebyrc/sandbox


text:
Public International Law/Table of Contents

 Back to home page

Part I - History, Theory, and Methods Part II - General International Law Part III - Specialized Fields
 * § 1 History of International Law
 * § 1.1 Founding Myths
 * § 1.2 Nineteenth Century
 * § 1.3 Decolonization
 * § 2 Nature and Purpose of International Law
 * § 2.1 International Law and Violence
 * § 2.2 Consent
 * § 2.3 Enforcement
 * § 3 Methodology
 * § 3.1 Case Analysis
 * § 3.2 Interdisciplinarity
 * § 4 Approaches to International Law
 * § 4.1 Positivism
 * § 4.2 TWAIL
 * § 4.3 Feminism & Queer Theory
 * § 4.4 Marxism
 * § 5 Interaction
 * § 5.1 Interaction within International Law
 * § 5.2 International Law and Domestic Law
 * § 6 Sources of International Law
 * § 6.1 Treaty Law
 * § 6.2 Customary Law
 * § 6.3 General Principles
 * § 6.4 Other Sources
 * § 7 Subjects and Actors in International Law
 * § 7.1 States
 * § 7.2 Indigenous Peoples
 * § 7.3 International Organizations
 * § 7.4 Individuals
 * § 7.5 Women in International Law
 * § 7.6 Non-governmental Organization
 * § 7.7 Corporations
 * § 7.8 Animals
 * § 7.9 Cities
 * § 8 Jurisdiction
 * § 9 State Responsibility
 * § 10 Diplomatic Relations
 * § 11 Immunities
 * § 12 Peaceful Settlement of Disputes
 * § 12.1 Evidence
 * § 13 Use of Force
 * § 14 Law of Armed Conflict
 * § 15 Law of the Sea
 * § 16 International Environmental Law
 * § 17 International Climate Change Law
 * § 18 International Migration Law
 * § 19 International Law in Cyberspace
 * § 20 Space Law
 * § 21 Human Rights Law
 * § 21.1 Recurring Themes in Human Rights Doctrine
 * § 21.2 Institutional Human Rights Protection
 * § 21.2.1 United Nations Human Rights System
 * § 21.2.2 African Human Rights System
 * § 21.2.3 European Human Rights System
 * § 21.2.4 Inter-American Human Rights System
 * § 21.2.5 Arab and Islamic Human Rights System
 * § 21.2.6 Asian Human Rights System
 * § 21.3 Critique of Human Rights
 * § 22 International Criminal Law
 * § 22.1 International Crimes
 * § 22.2 International Criminal Courts and Tribunals
 * § 22.3 Domestic Prosecution of International Crimes
 * § 23 International Economic Law
 * § 23.1 Investment Law
 * § 23.2 Trade Law
 * § 23.3 Monetary Law


text:
Wikibooks:Public International Law/History of International Law

Author: Jane Doe "Required knowledge: Link" "Learning objectives: Understanding XY."

This is where the text begins. This template follows our style guide. Please take into account our guidelines for didactics. If you're wondering how to create text in Wikibooks, feel free to check out our guide on how to write in Wikibooks.

Just replace the content above and below with your content.

Further Readings

 * Source I
 * Source II

Conclusion

 * Summary I
 * Summary II


text:
Public International Law/History of International Law

Author: Jane Doe "Required knowledge: Link" "Learning objectives: Gaining enough background-knowledge on international legal history to understand the references to histories in the following sub-chapters and other chapters of the book."

This is where the text begins. This template follows our style guide. Please take into account our guidelines for didactics. If you're wondering how to create text in Wikibooks, feel free to check out our guide on how to write in Wikibooks.

Just replace the content above and below with your content.

A. Introduction
Scholarly disciplines and fields of expertise more generally are constituted through how they tell their own history. Therefore, it is impossible to understand public international law both as a field of study and as an area of practical expertise without understanding its history. This does not mean that one can 'uncover' the 'true nature' of international law by finding a fixed origin or reveal the right way of interpreting specific legal doctrines by looking at their origins. In her book on International Law and the Politics of History, Anne Orford has powerfully laid out why international lawyers' thirst for certainty cannot be quenched by turning to history. What turning to history can do, however, is teach us something about the predominant self-images of the discipline through the way it habitually tells its own history. These self-images play such a crucial role in international legal histories that one may go as far as calling them 'fan fiction'. Of course, histories of international law also teach us something about how certain rules, institutions, concepts, doctrines, and apparent truths were created, and about how the law contributes to carrying 'past' injustices into the present. Perhaps most importantly, learning about how international law came about and about how it contributed to domination, exploitation, and injustice more generally means learning about how the world can be changed for the better.

To this end, the overall approach of this book is to include historical contextualisation in all parts of the book. The purpose of this chapter on the history of international law is to provide the necessary background knowledge to be able to connect these specific historical contextualisation and to place them in a broader picture. To this end, this introductory sub-chapter, first, offers some brief observations on the different ways in which international law as a discipline conceives of its origins, as well as on different ways in which 'origin stories' of individual areas of international law can be told. Second, it expands on some of the most important turning points, which mark a 'before' and 'after' and which are often referenced when talking about the development of important areas of international law. Third, it offers a glimpse into the contradictory nature of international law and its history, by introducing an account of the history of international law as a history of both empire and resistance. The following sub-chapters will then expand on selected topics, which are particularly important for understanding influential accounts of international law's origins, turning points, and contradictions. The origins of international law are further scrutinized in the sub-chapter on founding myths, while important turning points and accounts of domination and resistance are discussed in more detail in the sub-chapters on the nineteenth century and on decolonisation.

B. Origins and International Law
Histories of something necessarily have to start somewhere. Different approaches to history as a discipline and to using history in international law are partly characterised by different ways of both choosing the starting point and portraying the role of this starting point. The standard way of telling the history of international law consists in presenting a starting point that offers a foundation to international law, a point in time that reflects international law's 'original identity', thus assuming ‘the existence of immobile forms that precede the external world of accident and succession’. The most popular starting point in this sense consists of the combination of Hugo Grotius' work De jure belli ac pacis (Latin: Of the Law on War and Peace) in 1625 and the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. This typical starting point in telling the history of international law also typically coincides with a conception of history as an endeavour that portrays 'how it really was' in the past. A different way of conceiving of origins consists in searching for starting points not as points in time marking the 'birth' and foundation of something, but rather as the circumstances that best explain the emergence, formation, and heritage of something. International legal scholars who rely on a (loosely) Foucauldian notion of 'genealogy' adopt this latter stance towards origins. A third way of engaging with history rejects such origin stories altogether, arguing that events, ideas, and people of the past have to be examined not for what they brought about but for the role they played in their own time. However, as Anne Orford has famously remarked, lawyers are typically trained to make meaning move through time.

Moreover, choosing a starting point for the history of international law one wants to write presupposes that one knows, at least roughly, what international law is. If international law is understood as the law that governs the relationship between sovereign States, then the starting point in the history of international law has to depict how States and sovereignty emerged and how and when they started to have relationships governed by law. If international law is, more broadly, understood as the law of global encounters, then one may conclude that the encounters that shaped the laws continuing to govern global encounters today emerged not (primarily and exclusively) in encounters between States, but between Empires such as the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and British Empire and between one or more of these Empires, the people living on the land these Empires sought to conquer, and the companies they sponsored to carry out these conquests.

[Reflections on origin stories of individual branches]

I. Portuguese and Spanish Colonial Conquest and the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)
As pointed out above, one way of telling the history of international law is as a history of colonial encounter. The first period of European colonialism was marked by a rivalry between Portuguese and Spanish conquistadores (Portuguese and Spanish: 'conquerors'), who were sponsored by the respective monarchs to 'discover' and conquer the rest of the world. While the Portuguese, over the course of the fifteenth century, sailed the Atlantic coast of Africa and reached the Indian Ocean by these routes, the 'Catholic Monarchs' Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand the II of Aragon provided funds for Christopher Columbus' plan to find a way to the Indies by sailing westward through the Atlantic. Instead of India, Columbus reached the island named Ayiti or Quisqueya by its Taíno inhabitants, but which Columbus claimed to have 'discovered' and proceded to call 'Hispaniola', a Latinized way of saying 'Spanish'. The 'discovery' of this island and other islands in the Caribbean during Columbus' first expedition propmpted the Catholic Monarchs to seek the support of Pope Alexander VI for their claim to the 'New World' immediatley after Columbus' return in 1493. After ongoing colonial rivalries between the Spanish and Portuguese monarchs and respective papal bulls and treaties, the details of which cannot be recounted here, the Catholic Monarchs on one side and Joao II, King of Portugal, on the other side, divided up their speheres of influence in the Atlantic by agreeing on a new demarcation line in the Treaty of Tordesillas, which was signed on June 7th, 1494. The Treaty of Tordesillas marks an important turning point in the history of international law, not only because the spheres of influence outlined in this treaty established the division between Hispanic and Portuguese parts of the Americas - the latter constituting today's State of Brazil - but also because it marks an important step away from relying on purely Papal authority and grounding legal claims in inter-state agreements instead. In this sense, the Treaty of Tordesillas may be seen to be part of the origins of international law both as the law of inter-state relationships and as the law of colonial encounter. Other important steps in this development consist in the Treaty of Zaragoza, signed in 1529, which constitutes the first instance in which one of the colonising states formulated a legal claim to the land in the Americas based on so-called 'first discovery'. A synthesis between different sources of claims to land and authority is formulated by Francisco de Vitoria in 1537-1539 in his lectures De Indis (Latin: 'Of the Indies'), a work which Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) consider to be a decisive element of international law's origins.

II. Sovereignty and Secularism on the European Continent and in the Colonial Encounter
As stated above - and as will be reiterated throughout the book - the dominant way of characterising international law is as the law that governs the relations between sovereign States. The end of the sixteenth and, more importantly, the seventeenth century, are crucial for the emergence of sovereignty as the paradigm governing the relationships between political entities. These political entities, on the European continent, merged from being mainly Empires, cities, leagues of trading posts such as the Hanseatic League, and other actors to being mainly organised as States. When Jean Bodin published his work titled Six Livres de la République (English: 'Six Books of the Republic') in 1576, which contained the now canonical definition of sovereignty as 'absolute and perpetual power' and of accountability of the sovereign Prince 'only to God', this description was still largely counterfactual. Over the course of the seventeenth century, sovereign States did, however, gain the ability to control their territory, as the grounds for authority shifted from an interpersonal to a territorial model. This provided sovereign States with the necessary authority and political continuity to commit themselves externally as States rather than as individual monarchs or other rulers.

Simultaneously, chartered companies like the Dutch East India Company, which was founded in 1602, exerted a slightly different kind of sovereignty on the territories and on the parts of the sea where they sought to establish trading monopolies or, where they lacked the necessary control to establish such a monopoly, to push for freedom of travel and trade. Among the influential figures who advocated for freedom of the seas and free trade in this sense and in the interest of the Dutch East India Company was Hugo Grotius, whose first work, De mare liberum (Latin: 'Of the free sea'), was, in its first version, commissioned by the Dutch East India Company. With his work De jure belli ac pacis libri tres (Latin: 'Three books on war and peace'), Grotius provided a comprehensive work on international law and a synthesis between naturalist conceptions of the law, i.e. conceptions that base the validity of the law on a source outside of the law like God or reason, and positivist conceptions that derive the validity of the law from legal rules themselves and from the will and consent of the sovereign. These two characteristics of De jure belli ac pacis libri tres - its comprehensive systematicity and its combination of naturalist and positivist concepttions of law - earned Grotius the title of 'father of international law', which will be problematised in the following sub-chapter on international law's founding myths. The second element that is, next to Grotius, part of most origin stories of international law is the Peace of Westphalia of 1648. The peace treaties of Münster and Osnabrück, which together form the Peace of Westphalia, marked the end of the Thirty Years War on the European continent, a war fought along religious lines between catholic and protestant rulers. In confirmation of the earlier Peace of Augsburg of 1555, which established the principle cuius regio eius religio (Latin: 'whose realm, their religion'), the Peace of Westphalia was the focal point of a longer development that resulted in the establishment of a system of sovereign States centered around territoriality and the prohibition of outside interference. 'Westphalia' is therefore also often used as a chiffre for describing an international system characterised by unfettered State sovereignty and little to no rules governing how States are to exercise their sovereignty - especially within their territories.

Further Readings

 * Source I
 * Source II

Conclusion

 * Summary I
 * Summary II


text:
User talk:Ebyrc/sandbox

this is a comment test

title: User talk:Ebyrc/sandbox


text:
Public International Law/History of International Law/Founding Myths

Author: Sué González Hauck "Required knowledge: Link" "Learning objectives: Understanding and contextualizing the debates on the origins of international law, particularly regarding the figures of Hugo Grotius and Francisco de Vitoria and the Peace of Westphalia."

A. Of Fathers and Birth Certificates: The Founding Myths and International Law's Institutional Anxiety
International law as a discipline is famously riddled with its fair share of anxiety. "Does international law even exist?", "Does it matter?" "Is it really law?" and, perhaps most importantly, "Are we, international lawyers, the good guys or are we the baddies?" International law has been able to affirm its existence by grounding itself in a tradition that provided a 'birth certificate' - the Peace Treaties of Münster and Osnabrück or 'Peace of Westphalia' – and a 'father' – mainly Hugo Grotius. Together, the Peace of Westphalia and Grotius' work De iure belli ac pacis libri tres (Three books on the law of war and peace) established State sovereignty as the source of international law's binding force, thus establishing international law as real law that is distinguishable from religious and moral sources of normativity. Simultaneously, grounding its existence in peace treaties that ended a 30-year period of war and chaos on the European continent and casting Hugo Grotius as a secular, peace-loving humanitarian allowed international lawyers to see themselves as invested in a project that served humanity as a whole and that would bring peace, order, and justice to the world.

In recent decades, TWAIL scholars have drawn attention to international law's sustained and central role in legitimizing and maintaining the colonial project. These critical histories of international law draw a different line of continuity from the writings of Hugo Grotius and Francisco de Vitoria to the establishment of international law as a formalized discipline in the nineteenth century and to international law in its present form. Simultaneously, the debates about the place of people like Hugo Grotius and Francisco de Vitoria and of events like the Peace of Westphalia in the history of international law have to be seen against the backdrop of broader methodological debates. Contextualist historical methodologies reject linear narratives altogether and instead aim at placing people and events in the context of their times. In her recent book, Anne Orford responds to the rising influence of these contextualist approaches to the history of international law, insisting that scholars writing histories of international law always create meaning instead of merely finding it.

1. Hugo Grotius and the Grotian Tradition in International Law
Hugo de Groot, whom we know by his Latinized name of Grotius, was born in Delft in 1583, at a time when the Dutch States General had just created the Dutch Republic by abjuring Philip II of Spain and Portugal as the ruler of the Low Countries. The newly founded Dutch Republic was looking to assert itself against Portugal and Spain, which, at the time, were the most important colonial powers. It was in this context that the Dutch East India Company (VOC) asked Grotius to write a defense of the Company's privateering campaign in waters that Portugal had claimed as an Estado de India under Portuguese control. Grotius completed the resulting manuscript, De Indis, in 1607-16-08 and, at the request of the VOC's Director, published chapter twelve of this manuscript in 1609 under the title Mare Liberum (The Free See). This first work of Grotius has long been neglected by mainstream histories of international law, which have focused almost exclusively on De iure belli ac pacis, which is considered to be the first systematic treatise of international law. The myth of Grotius as the 'founding father' of international law is an invention of the late 19th century. Key events in this regard were a commemoration of the tercentenary of Grotius's birth in 1883 at the New Church in Delft, the unveiling of a Grotius statue in the Delft market square in 1886, a ceremonious reburial of Grotius' remains in 1889, and, most importantly, the 1899 Hague Peace Conference.

As scholars of international law and international relations sought to reinvigorate the project of a peaceful international order created and maintained by international law after the Second World War, they did so by reclaiming Grotius and sketching a 'Grotian tradition' of international law and international relations. In a 'Grotian' international community, the power of the sovereign State is supposed to be restricted by the rationality of the law, which is equivalent to its systematicity. Hedley Bull took up the idea of a 'Grotian tradition' and contrasted it with a 'Hobbesian' and a 'Kantian' conception of international relations. Bull and other authors of the English School tradition in International Relations Theory see the Grotian conception of international society as a middle-ground position between, on one hand, a 'realist' or 'Hobbesian' view of international relations based on the unfettered sovereignty of States and, on the other hand, a 'universalist' or 'Kantian' idea of a cosmopolitan world society as a global community of humankind, in which international institutions represent individual human beings and are based on common values and globally shared interests.

'Grotian' may be seen as shorthand for liberal internationalism, i.e. for the idea that ordered law can create order through law in a way that is opposed to unfettered power, and for a belief in progress from a state of war and turmoil to a more just and peaceful international order. Boutros Boutros-Ghali's invocation of a 'Grotian moment' after the end of the Cold War illustrates this way of referring to the Grotian tradition: 'The community of nations has entered a new era. The international system that sustained us in the past has yet to be replaced. We are in the process of building a new international system, and we are doing so under unprecedented conditions. The outset of the modern age, some three and a half centuries ago, was an uncertain time, filled with both promise and peril. The foundations for a stable and progressive system of relations among States were laid, at that time, by Hugo de Groot (1583-1645), known as Grotius, the father of international law. Perhaps we have come to another such 'Grotian moment' in history, one in which a renaissance of international law is needed to help transform the world scene in this new era that all States have entered'. International legal scholars have repeatedly invoked 'Grotian moments', inter alia, to promote an interpretation of state sovereignty that places human rights at the center of said concept and therefore of international law,, to assess the role of international law after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, , to argue for the emergence of instant customary law in the field of international criminal law, , and to describe changes in the law of statehood. Invoking a 'Grotian moment' allows international legal scholars and representatives of international institutions simultaneously to argue for change and to ground their project in tradition.

Recent work focusing on the connection between Grotius's work and colonialism not only calls into question the flattering self-image of international law as a peace-seeking humanitarian discipline. It also challenges the assumption that the origins of modern international law can be found exclusively in Europe. Placing Grotius in the context of his role as legal advisor to the VOC shows that the questions he adressed in his work did not originate on the European continent but, outside Europe, through the colonial encounter.

2. Francisco de Vitoria
Hugo Grotius' strongest competitor for the role of 'father of international law' is Francisco de Vitoria. The argument put forward in favour of granting Vitoria and not Grotius this title is that, while Grotius may have presented the first systematic exposition of what was then called the Law of Nations, Grotius was already writing in a tradition that was founded by the so-called School of Salamanca, of which Francisco de Vitoria was, in turn, the founder and most prominent member. Vitoria was the first scholar to adapt the Roman concept of ius gentium to what we recognize now as an international context. The context to which he applied the term and its legal implications was the encounter between the Spanish empire and indigenous peoples in what is now known as South America and the Caribbean. His two lectures in which he first applied ius gentium were titled De Indis Noviter Inventis ['On the Indians Lately Discovered'] and De Jure Bellis Hispanorum in Barbaros ['On the Law of War Made by the Spaniards on the Barbarians'], and they were obviously concerned with a colonial relationship. The question of whether Vitoria was using ius gentium to condemn or at least reign in colonial violence or whether he was actually justifying and thereby enabling it is a hotly debated question. This question is debated so fiercely, because it is equated with the question of whether international law has been, from the beginning, humanitarian or imperialist in nature.

3. Other Contendants for the Title of 'Father of International Law'
Other figures on whom international legal scholars have relied as founders of include Francisco Suárez (1548-1617), Alberico Gentili (1552-1603), Emer de Vattel (1714-1767),and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), who coined the term 'public international law'.

II. Mothers of International Law?
As international law as a discipline is increasingly rallying around the goal of increased female representation not only in international institutions but also in the history of international (legal) thought, Christine de Pizan has emerged as the strongest contendant for the title of 'mother of international law'. Her claim to the title rests on the fact that she wrote a book on the laws of war and that she did so long before Grotius and even before Vitoria, Gentili, and Suárez. She is the author of the book titled Livre de Faits d'armes et de chevalerie(The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry), which is considered to be one of the first texts on the laws of war.

C. Birth Certificate: 'Westphalia' and the 'Westphalian System'
The myth of ‘Westphalia’ is the familiar story according to which the peace settlements of Münster and Osnabrück established a system of sovereign States in which we still live today. The myth was created in the 19th century and consolidated in its current form mainly based on an article written by Leo Gross in 1948. Gross was not the first one to pinpoint the beginning of ‘modern international law’ to the Peace of Westphalia and he admitted that the peace treaties of Münster and Osnabrück constituted a step ‘in the gradual, though by no means uniform, process which antedates and continues beyond the year 1648’ rather than a radical break. However, Gross also states that ‘Westphalia, for better or worse, marks the end of an epoch and the opening of another. It represents the majestic portal which leads from the old into the new world’. Gross exerted significant influence by unfolding what scholars of international relations and international law came to describe as the ‘Westphalian System’, a chiffre employed to refer to a framework for political and legal thought rather than to a historical reality. He presents a narrative of continuity spanning from the Peace of Westphalia to the Charter of the United Nations. According to this narrative, the Peace of Westphalia as ‘the first great European or world charter’ represents ‘the first of several attempts to establish something resembling world unity on the basis of states exercising untrammeled sovereignty over certain territories and subordinated to no earthly authority’. Gross substantiates this claim by stating that regarding the principle of religious tolerance, the purpose of achieving international cooperation, the guarantee of peace, and the establishment of rules for peaceful settlement of disputes, the UN Charter can be seen as the latest step in a line of evolution that began with the Peace of Westphalia.

The treaties themselves and the political and social circumstances in 1648 do not warrant the characteristics of the ‘Westphalian System’ attributed to it. Attributing the establishment of modern international law as a system based on state sovereignty to the Peace of Westphalia is – at best – a simplification. The developments that are commonly associated with ‘Westphalia’ either started more than a century before 1648 or did not take place until the 19th and 20th centuries. Particularly, the notion of territorial sovereignty that is supposed to be the cornerstone of the ‘Westphalian System’ was not explicitly referenced in the treaties.The peace treaties did indeed presuppose the sovereignty of the Swedish and French kings in the sense that they were not subordinated to the authority of the Emperor or the Pope. This conception of sovereignty, however, differed from the characteristics of the respective nineteenth century conception. The latter is the conception commonly referred to with the chiffre of the ‘Westphalian System’ and it includes the sovereign authority to dispose of the law. In contrast, the kind of sovereignty to which the peace traties of Münster and Osnabrück referred was grounded in natural law ideas and in the ideal of solidarity among monarchs. Instead of introducing a system of abstract territorial sovereignty, the Peace of Westphalia 'maintained a period of personal relations of power [...] in a complex patchwork of imperial and princely sovereignties and quasi-sovereignties until the early-nineteenth century and the final breakdown of the Holy Roman Empire'.

The common simplifications of historical processes and the habitual reference to ‘classical’ international law or ‘classical’ notions of sovereignty as ‘Westphalian’ engenders consequences regarding the conditions of possibility of present-day arguments about international law. By serving as the founding myth of both the system of sovereign states as a political system and the system of international law based on State (note the uppercase) sovereignty, the myth of ‘Westphalia’ not only establishes a hierarchy in which arguments derived from sovereignty seem to ‘fit’ the system and arguments that encroach on this sovereignty have to be framed as justified exceptions to the rule, but it also makes this normative hierarchy seem ‘natural’. By making these conditions of possibility for making international legal arguments seem natural, the myth of 'Westphalia' and all that is associated with it obfuscates how international law functions as a language of power.

Conclusion

 * Summary I
 * Summary II