OUVRAGE : T. Sparks, A. Peters (eds.), The Individual in International Law: History and Theory

Tom SPARKS, Anne PETERS

Shifts across the corpus of international law have brought the international legal system into a closer alignment with the interests of the individual. This has led to a great and growing interest in the roles and status of individuals in international law, and provided new impulses for debate.

The Individual in International Law is an exploration of what is described as the humanisation of international law. It examines how international law has accommodated individuals, and how individual status, rights, and obligations have become denser and more important in the international legal system. Split into two parts, the book analyses the humanisation of international law in different historical periods and from various theoretical perspectives. 

The first part focuses on the historical evolution of international law, exploring how the interests of individuals have shaped the development of the legal system from antiquity to 1945, providing a counterpoint to State-centric readings of international law's history. The second part contains theoretical debates, critical approaches, and interdisciplinary investigations, offering perspectives from ius positivism and ius naturalism, Marxism, TWAIL, feminism, global law, global constitutionalism, law and economics, and legal anthropology. The book aims to stimulate further research on the humanisation and dehumanisation of new fields ranging from the ius contra bellum to climate law. The editors' introduction and conclusion frame the contributions, draw together their findings, and address critiques comprehensively.

Written by a team of acknowledged experts in their fields, this volume elucidates how the interests, rights, obligations, and responsibilities of individuals have shaped international norms and regimes, and suggests how a reoriented transformative humanism can inform and develop international law in an era of profound ideological, ecological, and technical challenge.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contributors
Acknowledgments

1. Anne Peters, Tom Sparks, Introduction: The History and Theory of the Individual in International Law,

I. THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

2. Eleanor Cowan, The Individual in International Law in Antiquity
3. Dante Fedele, Alain Wijffels, Individuals and Group Identity in Medieval International Law
4. Francesca Iurlaro, From Exemplary Individuals to Private Persons with Rights: International Law 1500-1647, Vitoria, Gentili, and Grotius
5. Mark Somos, From Re- to Demoralisation: The Individual in International Law, 1648-1789
6. Inge Van Hulle, The Individual in International Law in the Nineteenth Century, 1789-1914
7. Anne Peters, Before Human Rights: The Formation of the International Status of the Individual, 1914-1945

II. THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

8. Gleider I. Hernández, Legal Positivism and the Individual in International Law
9. Rafael Domingo, The Individual in International Law from the Contemporary Sacred Natural Law Perspective
10. Tom Sparks, The Individual in Secular Natural Law Theories of International Law
11. B.S. Chimni, The Status of the Individual in International Law: A TWAIL Perspective
12. Ruth Houghton, The Individual in Feminist Approaches to International Law
13. Marina Veličković, A Marxist Account of the Individual in International Law
14. Angelo Jr. Golia, Global Law and the Individual
15. Başak Çalı, Global Constitutionalism and the Individual
16. Anne van Aaken, The Individual in (International) Law and Economics
17. Marie-Claire Foblets, Individual Personhood in Anthropological Approaches to International Law
18. Anne Peters, Tom Sparks, Conclusion: Reconsidering the Individual in International Law

Index 

Tom SPARKS, Anne PETERS (eds.), The Individual in International Law: History and Theory, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2024 (448 pp.)

Tom Sparks is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, where he works on international environmental law, the humanisation of international law and legal theory. He wrote his doctoral thesis at the University of Durham, entitled Towards a Human-Centred International Law: Self-Determination and the Structure of the International Legal System. The thesis won the Global Policy North network of research universities' prize for the best doctoral dissertation of 2018. He is the author of Self-Determination in the International Legal System: Whose Claim, to What Right? (Hart 2023).

Anne Peters is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law Heidelberg, a professor at the universities of Heidelberg, Freie Universität Berlin, Basel, and Michigan. She has been a member of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) in respect of Germany (2011-2015), served as the President of the European Society of International Law (2010-2012) and as President of the German Society of International Law (DGIR) (2019-2023). She is a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration and an associate member of the Institut de Droit International.