International law has played a crucial role in the construction of imperial projects. Yet within the growing field of studies about the history of international law and empire, scholars have seldom considered this complicit relationship in the Americas. The Hidden History of International Law in the Americas offers the first exploration of the deployment of international law for the legitimization of U.S. ascendancy as an informal empire in Latin America. This book explores the intellectual history of a distinctive idea of American international law in the Americas, focusing...

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 book contends 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...

This collective volume brings together contributions by academics in various fields of law and the humanities, in order to tackle the complex interactions between international law and religion. The originality and the variety of approaches makes this book a must-have for academics planning to approach the topic in the future.

In this original study, Will Smiley reassesses an aspect of the legacy of the Ottoman-Russian wars in the eighteenth century: both empires had a long history of slavery, but in the course of the eighteenth century they worked out a new regional international law that transformed captivity, introducing the concept of prisoners of war.

How has the early development of private international law affected contemporary practice? Through a broad contextual and historical analysis, Roxana Banu offers new interpretations of nineteenth century canonical writings in private international law, while also resurfacing crucial forgotten and marginalized perspectives.