This chapter concerns international organisations, from their inception to their rise. Regional organisations are described in Europe, Central and South America, Arabia, Africa and South East Asia. This is followed by an examination of some legal aspects of international organisations, such as their definition, and the question of legal personality. A discussion of the constituent instruments of such organisations is noted before the question of their powers is examined. The applicable law of such organisations is described, followed by an analysis of the responsibility of international organisations. The liability of member states of international organisations is considered, as is the accountability of the organisations. This is followed by a consideration of the privileges and immunities of international organisations. The chapter concludes with a look at the questions of withdrawal from such organisations, the dissolution of international organisations and the succession of international organisations.

This chapter first discusses the main subjects of international law and explains their principal features. It then zooms in on states, the traditional and principal actors in the international legal system. It discusses the criteria for statehood under international law, the role that recognition plays in this respect, and how new states emerge. Finally, this chapter turns to an analysis of the right to self-determination, a notion that plays an important role in the creation of states and is considered to be the most prominent right of one of the subjects of international law: people.

Despite China’s efforts to corporatize state-owned enterprises (SOEs), these entities have not fully adopted the pure corporate form typical of private corporations. This chapter employs the theoretical framework of regulatory costs and ownership costs to explain the distinctive characteristics of SOEs by examining how they differ from the corporate form characterized by five features: legal personality, limited liability, delegated management, transferable shares, and investor ownership. While the corporate form is essential for financial purposes – particularly when a firm needs to obtain equity financing from a large group of investors – the benefits for governance purposes are less clear. Although adopting a corporate form reduces ownership costs, it incurs relatively higher regulatory costs. The chapter concludes by considering how different organizational forms can be utilized to achieve both financial and regulatory objectives in various contexts.

Chapter 2 begins by addressing some vital preliminary legal issues, including the status of armed groups as international legal persons and the binding force of international law on such actors. The chapter argues that the concept of international legal personhood is best understood as a descriptive term rather than a prerequisite for entities to incur international legal obligations. It further explains that IHL, international human rights law (IHRL) and international criminal law (ICL) contain relevant obligations governing the conduct of trials and passing of penal sentences during NIAC. It demonstrates that whereas the direct application of IHL to armed groups as distinct collective entities is today widely accepted, the direct application of IHRL – despite strong normative arguments in favour – remains disputed and underdeveloped. Finally, this chapter aims to define entities referred to as ‘armed groups’, and clarifies who exactly is bound by the obligations applicable to them.

Having discussed the main limitations of current approaches in theorizing international organizations, this chapter goes on to investigate their core assumptions about the state. These are the notions that the state can be analogized to the ‘natural’ person of domestic law and that it forms an opaque and closed-off unitary actor. This chapter goes on to explain how this image may inadvertently distort how international organizations are theorized – from how we are to understand the relationship with their members to more technical questions of customary international law. Concluding this chapter, I suggest that theorizing international organizations should proceed from an altogether different premise. This is the idea the state itself is an artificial entity rather than a somehow naturally irreducible one.

This chapter starts to explain what the genealogical continuity between states and international organizations means in practice. First, it reappraises how we should go about defining international organizations. Crucially, it is not because international organizations meet certain abstract criteria of ‘organizationhood’ that they should be admitted into our legal ontology, but rather because these institutions are expressions of the same communal capacity to self-describe. The chapter then revisits two persistent doctrinal puzzles regarding these institutions: the notion that international organizations enjoy a will that is ‘distinct’ from their members and the notion that they enjoy a legal personality that is opposable to non-members. It argues that both problems should be viewed in the context of more general problems that equally affect states’ corporate existence.

This chapter critically examines the treatment of concepts of legal personality and representation provided by the great (if lamentably now mostly forgotten) German realist phenomenologist Adolf Reinach. In The A Priori Foundations of the Civil Law (1913), Reinach offers what is meant to be a phenomenological elucidation of the a priori nature (essential formal characteristics) of a wide variety of foundational legal concepts, the latter understood as denoting distinctive modalities of speech act. The primary interest of the chapter lies in the analysis that Reinach provides of concepts of personality and representation. However, one cannot understand what is distinctive in – and distinctively compelling or puzzling about – Reinach’s analysis of these concepts without appreciating what is distinctive about his general methodology of conceptual analysis (i.e., his phenomenological, speech act theoretical understanding of social behavior denoted by legal concepts). Thus, in addition to examining Reinach’s views on persons, legal personhood, and legal representation, the chapter provides a critical introduction to Reinachian conceptual analysis and explains its enduring interest for contemporary private law theory.

This chapter covers civil rights under international human rights law. It includes the right to legal personality, the right to a name, the right to family life, the right to marry, the right to privacy, and the right to respect for home and correspondence. The chapter discusses the legal standards and protections for these rights, the obligations of states to respect and fulfill them, and the role of international bodies in monitoring compliance. It also highlights the challenges in implementing civil rights protections and the importance of adopting comprehensive measures to address violations and ensure effective remedies for victims.

This chapter explores the legality of the IMF’s shift in mandate, and considers the overarching question of whether the institution was legally entitled to expand its mandate over time through de facto legal doctrines rather than express or implied consent of the members. The analysis begins with a consideration of the legal basis of the Fund’s initiative by examining the international legal theory on the legal personality of international organisations. That is, whether the mandate of an international organization is strictly dependant on the wording of its constitutive instrument(s), or whether the mandate can evolve so as to accommodate new de facto attributions and competences. The Fund’s mandate shift is then tested by taking into account the power of soft law. A key aspect in the legal literature is whether the constituent doctrine of ‘separate will’ or ‘volonté distincte’, which allows an organisation to act independently – that is without the express or implied consent of members – would apply to the mandate expansion as the move ensured the Fund maintained relevancy in an ever-changing world. Finally, the chapter concludes that the Fund’s mandate expansion was in line with the standards of international law applicable to international organisations.

We are at war with life. The Earth ecosystem, our common home, is being destroyed by industrial technologies which have led to massive pollution of all ecosystems, greenhouse effect, deforestation, impoverishment of the soil, overexploitation of fresh water, acidification of the ocean. We are now engaged in a sixth mass extinction. It is time to recognise the ongoing ecocide, the destruction of our common home, as a crime. It is also time to relearn to live in harmony with Nature, to recognise its intrinsic value and its right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, in all its life forms. The Rights of Nature allow us to protect the rights of future generations, human and non-human. This chapter presents various new initiatives and legal cases from around the world to that end.

This chapter assesses the contribution of the ICJ to the law of international organisations. It emphasises the limited role of the Court in this field, setting out the multiple reasons for this: parts of the law were developed before the Court commenced its work; and the Court has only had intermittent opportunities to consider it through its cases. The author argues that the Court’s approach reflects a more general ambivalence of classic international law when it comes to international institutions: that it emphasises the centrality of States in the international legal system, notwithstanding the steps that have been taken by States to institutionalise significant areas of international law.

What role do international organizations play in international law? Similar to states, they have international legal personality, responsibilities, and immunities.  This chapter focuses on the preeminent global intergovernmental organization, the United Nations, and details the functions and limits of its principal organs.  Special attention is given to the General Assembly, Security Council, and International Court of Justice. The European Union is the leading example of a regional, supranational organization, and its authority and institutions are discussed in detail as well. The chapter concludes with brief considerations of other major international organizations, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Organization of American States, the African Union, and the World Health Organization.

How do we define the state in international law, and what is its relationship to individuals? We begin by outlining the state as a legal concept and differentiating it from similar concepts. We then explore the legal personality of the state under international law, including the elements of statehood, absolute and restrictive immunity, and state responsibility. The problems of state recognition (or non-recognition) of other states and governments is a key to understanding how states interact, as are changes in state status (e.g., secession or other consequential changes).  The last half of the chapter is devoted to the reciprocal responsibilities state and individuals have toward one another, focusing on nationality, citizenship, refugees, statelessness, and the state’s treatment of foreign nationals.

When considering ways for preventing Member States from hiding behind the institutional veil of the organization, two distinct approaches can be identified. The first focuses on the position of the Member State as a subject endowed with its own distinct personality and holder of its own rights and obligations. According to this approach, when the State acts as a member within or on behalf of the organization, it continues to be bound by its obligations and may be held individually responsible for their breach. The second approach focuses on the position of the State qua member of the organization. It relies on the institutional link binding together the organization and its members to affirm that, under certain circumstances, all members should be called upon to bear the consequences of the wrongful acts of the organization in a collective way. While much of the debate on the risk of abuse of the organization’s institutional veil tends to focus on the question of collective responsibility of members, the chapter argues that in practice it is through different forms of individual responsibility that the organization’s institutional veil has been pierced or circumvented.