Humanitarian intervention seemed to promise a world in which human rights would be privileged over national interests or imperial ambitions during the 1990s. This book argues that humanitarian intervention had far more exploitative effects and draws on feminist, postcolonial, legal and psychoanalytic theory to provide an innovative reading of the narratives accompanying humanitarian intervention, a field which has received very little critical analysis. It concludes by considering what has been lost in the transference of concerns from humanitarian intervention to the war on terror.

Institutional and political developments since the end of the Cold War have led to a revival of public interest in, and anxiety about, international law. Liberal international law is appealed to as offering a means of constraining power and as representing universal values. This book brings together scholars who draw on jurisprudence, philosophy, legal history and political theory to analyse the stakes of this turn towards international law. Contributors explore the history of relations between international law and those it defines as other - other traditions, other logics, other forces, and...

Humanitarian intervention seemed to promise a world in which human rights would be privileged over national interests or imperial ambitions during the 1990s. This book argues that humanitarian intervention had far more exploitative effects and draws on feminist, postcolonial, legal and psychoanalytic theory to provide an innovative reading of the narratives accompanying humanitarian intervention, a field which has received very little critical analysis. It concludes by considering what has been lost in the transference of concerns from humanitarian intervention to the war on terror.

Institutional and political developments since the end of the Cold War have led to a revival of public interest in, and anxiety about, international law. Liberal international law is appealed to as offering a means of constraining power and as representing universal values. This book brings together scholars who draw on jurisprudence, philosophy, legal history and political theory to analyse the stakes of this turn towards international law. Contributors explore the history of relations between international law and those it defines as other - other traditions, other logics, other forces, and...

The idea that states and the international community have a responsibility to protect populations at risk has framed internationalist debates about conflict prevention, humanitarian aid, peacekeeping and territorial administration since 2001. Anne Orford situates the responsibility to protect' concept in a wider historical and jurisprudential context, demonstrating that the appeal to protection as the basis for de facto authority has emerged at times of civil war or revolution the protestant revolutions of early modern Europe, the bourgeois and communist revolutions of the following centuries...

The Oxford Handbook of International Legal Theory provides an accessible and authoritative guide to the major thinkers, concepts, approaches, and debates that have shaped contemporary international legal theory. The Handbook features close to fifty original essays by leading international scholars from a wide range of traditions, nationalities, and perspectives, reflecting the richness and diversity of this dynamic field.

The collection explores key questions and debates in international legal theory, offers new intellectual histories for the discipline, and provides fresh...