Book contents
- The Cambridge History of International Law
- The Cambridge History of
- Frontispiece
- The Cambridge History of International Law
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Plates
- Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 International Law at the Time of the League of Nations
- 2 The League of Nations and the Global Legal Order
- 3 The Scholarship of International Law at the Time of the League of Nations
- 4 The League of Nations as an International Organisation
- 5 The League of Nations and the Relationship between International Law and Municipal Law
- 6 Sovereignty, Territory and Jurisdiction
- 7 The Law of the Sea
- 8 Colonies and Mandates
- 9 The Use of Force
- 10 Law of Armed Conflict and Neutrality
- 11 Preventive Diplomacy, Peacekeeping and Peacemaking
- 12 The Law of State Responsibility: A Period of Great Advances
- 13 ‘The Beginning of Something Great’?
- 14 Investment
- 15 Trade Integration
- 16 Minorities, Refugees and Human Rights
- 17 A Period of Reckoning
- 18 Diplomatic Law
- 19 Dispute Settlement, Particularly Adjudication and Arbitration
- 20 The League for Nature
- 21 Soviet Approaches to International Law
- 22 The Americas at the Time of the League of Nations
- Index
- Plate Section (PDF Only)
- References
22 - The Americas at the Time of the League of Nations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2025
Book contents
- The Cambridge History of International Law
- The Cambridge History of
- Frontispiece
- The Cambridge History of International Law
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Plates
- Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 International Law at the Time of the League of Nations
- 2 The League of Nations and the Global Legal Order
- 3 The Scholarship of International Law at the Time of the League of Nations
- 4 The League of Nations as an International Organisation
- 5 The League of Nations and the Relationship between International Law and Municipal Law
- 6 Sovereignty, Territory and Jurisdiction
- 7 The Law of the Sea
- 8 Colonies and Mandates
- 9 The Use of Force
- 10 Law of Armed Conflict and Neutrality
- 11 Preventive Diplomacy, Peacekeeping and Peacemaking
- 12 The Law of State Responsibility: A Period of Great Advances
- 13 ‘The Beginning of Something Great’?
- 14 Investment
- 15 Trade Integration
- 16 Minorities, Refugees and Human Rights
- 17 A Period of Reckoning
- 18 Diplomatic Law
- 19 Dispute Settlement, Particularly Adjudication and Arbitration
- 20 The League for Nature
- 21 Soviet Approaches to International Law
- 22 The Americas at the Time of the League of Nations
- Index
- Plate Section (PDF Only)
- References
Summary
This chapter examines the history of international law in the Americas at the time of the League of Nations. It focuses on the pioneering role of the Americas in international organisation through the Pan American Union and the pan-Americanisation of the Monroe Doctrine, the golden years of the US-led tradition of American international law associated with the American Institute of International Law (AIIL) and its codification projects in the 1920s. It also explores the debates over intervention provoked by the codification projects advanced by the AIIL and the tensions that emerged between the continental tradition of American international law linked to the AIIL and a regional and anti-interventionist one associated with the notion of Latin American international law. This latter tradition gained wider popularity in the 1920s and began to adopt a more radical and anti-imperialist posture. These two hemispheric and regional approaches to international law declined in the 1940s and 1950s across the Americas right at the time when the United States adopted a geopolitical and globalist strategy, departing from continentalist approaches to international law.
Keywords
Information
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of International Law , pp. 717 - 745Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
References
Further Reading
Alvarez, Alejandro, La codificación del derecho internacional en América. Trabajos de la tercera Comisión de la Asamblea de Jurisconsultos reunida en Santiago de Chile (Santiago: Imprenta Universitaria 1923).Google Scholar
Alvarez, Alejandro, El derecho internacional del porvenir (Madrid: Editorial-América 1916).Google Scholar
Anghie, Antony, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barcia Trelles, Camilo, Doctrina de Monroe y cooperación internacional (Madrid: Editorial Mundo Latino 1931).Google Scholar
Becker Lorca, Arnulf, ‘International law in Latin America or Latin American international law? Rise, fall and retrieval of a tradition of legal thinking and political imagination’, Harvard Journal of International Law, 47 (2006) 283–305.Google Scholar
Becker Lorca, Arnulf, Mestizo International Law. A Global Intellectual History, 1842–1933 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duxbury, Alison, ‘Excluding revolutionary states: Mexico, Russia and the League of Nations’ in Orford, Anne, Greenman, Katherine, Saunders, Anna and Tzouvala, Ntina (eds.), Revolutions in International Law. The Legacies of 1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2021) 85–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Esquirol, Jorge L., ‘Latin America’ in Fassbender, Bardo and Peters, Anne (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012) 553–577.Google Scholar
Fabela, Isidro, ‘A los señores Delegados Latinoamericanos’ in Isidro Fabela, ‘Los Estados Unidos y la América Latina (1921–1929)’, Cuadernos Americanos 16 (1955) 7–80.Google Scholar
Fabela, Isidro, Estados Unidos contra la libertad. Estudios de historia diplomática americana (Barcelona: Talleres Gráficos Lux 1920).Google Scholar
Herrera León, Fabián, ‘Latin America and the League of Nations’ in Beezley, William (ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) at https://opil.ouplaw.com.Google Scholar
Janis, Mark W., America and the Law of Nations, 1776–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knox, Robert, ‘Haiti and the League of Nations: racialisation, accumulation and representation’, Melbourne Journal of International Law 2 (2020), 245–74.Google Scholar
McPherson, Alan, and Yannick, Wehrli (eds.), Beyond Geopolitics. New Histories of Latin America at the League of Nations (New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press 2015).Google Scholar
Maúrtua, Víctor, Páginas diplomáticas. La codificación americana del derecho internacional (Ensayos, proyectos, discursos) (Lima: Librería e Imprenta Gil 1940).Google Scholar
Mazower, Mark, Governing the World. The History of an Idea (London: Allen Lane, 2012).Google Scholar
Neff, Stephen C., Justice among Nations. A History of International Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2014).Google Scholar
Roig de Leuchsenring, Emilio, La Doctrina de Monroe y el Pacto de la Liga de las Naciones (La Habana: El siglo xx 1921).Google Scholar
Roig de Leuchsenring, Emilio, ‘El principio de no intervención en el Instituto Americano de Derecho Internacional y en la Comisión de Jurisconsultos Americanos’, Revista de Derecho Internacional, 7 (1928) 367–85.Google Scholar
Saavedra Lamas, Carlos, Tratado Antibélico de no-agresión y de conciliación (Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto, República Argentina 1933).Google Scholar
Sánchez Román, José Antonio, La Sociedad de Naciones y la reinvención del imperialismo liberal (Madrid: Marcial Pons 2021).Google Scholar
Scarfi, Juan Pablo, ‘Denaturalizing the Monroe Doctrine: the rise of Latin American legal anti-imperialism in the face of the modern US and hemispheric redefinition of the Monroe Doctrine’, Leiden Journal of International Law, 33 (2020) 541–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scarfi, Juan Pablo, The Hidden History of International Law in the Americas. Empire and Legal Networks (New York: Oxford University Press 2017).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scarfi, Juan Pablo, ‘The Latin American politics of international law: Latin American countries’ engagements with international law and their contradictory impact on the liberal international order’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 35(5) (2022), 662–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scarfi, Juan Pablo, ‘Mexican revolutionary constituencies and the Latin American critique of US intervention’ in Orford, Anne, Greenman, Katherine, Saunders, Anna and Tzouvala, Ntina (eds.), Revolutions in International Law. The Legacies of 1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2021) 218–41.Google Scholar
Scarfi, Juan Pablo, ‘Pan-American human rights: the legacy of pan-Americanism and the intellectual origins of the inter-American human rights system’ in Scarfi, Juan Pablo and Sheinin, David (eds.), The New Pan-Americanism and the Structuring of Inter-American Relations (New York: Routledge 2022) 138–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, James Brown, ‘The gradual and progressive codification of international law’, American Journal of International Law, 21 (1927) 417–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vecoso, Fabia Fernandes Carvalho, ‘Mexican post-revolutionary foreign policy and the Spanish Civil War: legal struggles over intervention at the League of Nations’ in Orford, Anne, Greenman, Katherine, Saunders, Anna and Tzouvala, Ntina (eds.), Revolutions in International Law. The Legacies of 1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2021) 242–67.Google Scholar
Accessibility standard: Unknown
Why this information is here
This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.Accessibility Information
Accessibility compliance for the HTML of this chapter is currently unknown
and may be updated in the future.