Chapter 2 examines the continued centrality of the state and how states, as the main duty-bearers, define and implement human rights and humanitarian principles domestically, as well as promote and protect them internationally.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book makes it clear that the law of international organisations is dominated by the united nations (UN). It defines and explains inter-governmentalism and the role of law in its regulation. The book presents a number of case studies that shows how the law works within an institutional order dominated by politics. The case studies highlight the debates that surround even the most basic legal issues; the furore surrounding the membership application of Palestine to join the UN, or the UN's claim to immunity in Haiti where it has been responsible for a catastrophic outbreak of cholera. The book also shows that law plays a significant role in curbing excesses and the abuse of power, as well as facilitating the channelling of power to achieve those purposes.

This chapter analyses the WTO’s institutional features, focusing on rule-making and dispute settlement. It describes the creation of the GATT and the shift to the WTO, analysing salient aspects of the WTO’s structure. It reviews how WTO institutions have operated, highlighting problematic features and identifying potential reforms. The WTO is widely viewed as a seriously flawed institution. Despite its goal of promoting liberalised trade, members have found it virtually impossible to conclude new agreements. The dispute settlement system, once viewed as its crown jewel, now lies in tatters. While many factors have contributed to the current situation, the multilateral trading system’s institutional architecture is deeply implicated.

This chapter considers the development of secondary rules of international law to cover the wrongful acts and omissions of inter-governmental organisations. It analyses the Articles on Responsibility of International Organisations (ARIO) developed by the International Law Commission. The chapter focuses on the weaknesses of the ARIO in distinguishing the responsibility of the UN from that of member states, something that has caused difficulties in judicial interpretation of the ARIO in the case of UN-mandated operation. It examines the issues of attribution in firstly the Behrami case before the European Court of Human Rights and secondly various cases before Dutch courts following the failure of the Dutch battalion of the United Nations Protection Force to protect civilians in Srebrenica in 1995.

This chapter examines the political economy of international trade policy, exploring the evolution of the international trading system from the GATT to the WTO. It analyses the fault lines between free trade and fair trade and winners and losers, and the role of labour market policies in addressing transition costs. It also discusses the challenges facing the WTO, including institutional dysfunction and an expanding mandate. It proposes potential solutions, such as plurilateral agreements and improved institutional arrangements, while emphasising the need for collaboration with other international agencies. The chapter concludes by stressing the urgency of recovering the aspirations of the post-war international order to address current global challenges.

Thes chapter argues that both Britons and South Asians made use of instruments such as treaties and a broader world of diplomatic paperwork to construct a framework for interstate legality in the eighteenth century. South Asian efforts to make and remake arrangements with British traders and government agencies constituted a source of inter-imperial legal forms. Inter-imperial treaties were not blunt instruments of European imperialism, but legal documents co-produced by South Asian bureaucrats. By emphasising the activism and political thought of South Asian actors in their pursuit of a new inter-imperial order, this chapter rethinks the focus on European actors as the architects of international law. Of course, multilingual and multipolar claim making did not impose a stable legal order in South Asia. Treaties were regularly abrogated and renegotiated. Nevertheless, such efforts to negotiate relationships among states and enshrine them punctuated and shaped the upheavals of the eighteenth century as well as the explosion of new projects of state building. Inter-imperial lawmaking emerged as a vital site for politics in the eighteenth century.

Indian history from 500 BC to AD 1000 is characterized by kingdoms and confederacies consolidating and expanding. This political landscape was theorized by ancient scholars as mandala, or ‘circles’ of kingdoms. Two areas brought these polities into contact: diplomacy and war. Indian legal tradition made rules of engagement for these areas. Diplomacy also required rules whereby diplomats were protected as they travelled to different kingdoms as representatives of their rulers. Economic imperatives necessitated long-distance trade not only between Indian polities, but also between India and other regions. Such trade required safe routes and a set of agreed laws governing such trade and traders. Early examples are set forth both in Kauṭilya’s treatise on governance called Arthaśāstra and in Indian treatises of the Dharmaśāstra genre. We set these normative works alongside some literary sources as well as documents preserved in inscriptional form. Beginning with a discussion of Dharmaśāstra as a form of transpolity legal ordering, the chapter proceeds to treat diplomacy, war, and trade as three areas of international law addressed in ancient India.

This chapter examines the complex relationship between international trade law and public health. While trade liberalisation can lower the cost of medical supplies and raise global standards of living, trade rules also constrain national public health measures and can facilitate trade in harmful products. The chapter analyses how the World Trade Organization (WTO) has addressed health-related trade restrictions, including disputes over tobacco, alcohol, and asbestos. It also explores the tension between intellectual property rights and access to essential medicines, as well as the impact of trade on healthcare supply chains, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. The chapter concludes by critiquing the WTO’s ‘exceptionalism’ framework for evaluating public health measures and arguing for a more integrated approach that prioritises both health and economic resilience.

‘Pan-Asianism’ came to prominence after the Second World War. Beyond the conventional understanding of the link between pan-Asianism and Japanese imperialism since then, this chapter explains the role of pan-Asianism as an anti-imperial ideology and strategy in the early twentieth century. As an anti-imperial ideology, pan-Asianism advanced a normative argument for the emancipation of Asia from Western imperialism and provided an alternative to Eurocentric discourse on civilisation, a vision premised upon a shared Asian spirituality, heritage, culture and glorious past. As an anti-imperial strategy, pan-Asianism offered Indian nationalist leaders in exile a language to gain support of the Japanese and the Chinese for their nationalist movement against British rule. Although pan-Asianism later came to be used as a justification in Japanese imperialism, it is important to highlight the anti-imperial role that pan-Asianism played in the early twentieth century. This chapter does so by analysing the works of leading Pan-Asianist ideologues and activists of the period and by highlighting the ideological and strategic aspects of their conception of pan-Asianism as anti-imperialism.

This chapter situates sovereignty at the heart of the relationship between international law and empire. I examine the ways in which the concept was defined to exclude non-European peoples while remaining alert to the complexities posed to such exclusionary definitions by the variety of polities that existed during the heyday of European imperialism. Colonial South Asia, with its melange of political units, provides an excellent illustration of this complicated relationship. I explore the diverse articulations of sovereignty in this region along two axes: temporal and categorical. At least three sets of constituents – British officials, rulers and bureaucrats of semi-sovereign entities such as princely states, and anticolonial nationalists in British India – used the language of sovereignty to debate and resolve political problems. I trace their definitions over time. By examining these actors and their legal arguments, we can understand how sovereignty in colonial South Asia transitioned from notions of layered sovereignty to more territorial forms, although pluralist ideas continue to have long afterlives in postcolonial South Asia.

The possession of international legal personality explains how the UN and similar inter-governmental organisations have extensive powers separate from those rights of states. The UN Security Council has the power to impose sanctions on a state or an individual, thereby creating binding duties for all states; no state, no matter how powerful, has that legal right. This chapter addresses the debate about the extent of the doctrine of legal powers through three case studies. The case studies include the legality of peacekeeping undertaken by the UN (including a discussion of the Expenses opinion) and the competence of the WHO and UN in relation to the possession or use of nuclear weapons by states (including a discussion of the Nuclear Weapons opinions). They also include the legislative powers of the Security Council (focusing on its counter-terrorism decision in Resolution 1373 of 2001).