The international legal order 1919–2019
| Author | Terry Nardin |
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117819834661 |
| Subject Matter | Part One: Structure and Order |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117819834661
International Relations
2019, Vol. 33(2) 157 –171
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117819834661
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The international legal
order 1919–2019
Terry Nardin
Yale-NUS College
Abstract
Despite repeated claims during the past century that the international legal order has been
radically transformed, the contours of that order are in many ways the same in 2019 as they were
in 1919. New laws govern international institutions, human rights, trade, and the environment
and new institutions have emerged that affect how international law is interpreted and applied.
War has lost legitimacy as a tool of foreign policy and individual responsibility for aggression and
crimes against humanity has been affirmed. Yet these changes build on ideas and practices that
may have been rudimentary but were not absent a century ago. Underlying them are persistent
differences involving a shifting cast of old and new states as well as differences between local
and universal ideals and between instrumental and noninstrumental conceptions of law. The
traditional understanding of state sovereignty on which the international legal order rests has
been qualified but not discarded, and its persistence confirms that the system it orders remains
a system of states.
Keywords
history of international law, international institutions, international law, international system, law
of nations, new world order, transnational law
The study of international law today is at the margins of the discipline of International
Relations. It was not always so. The decade after the First World War saw the apogee of
academic and diplomatic confidence that international relations could be brought within
the rule of law. During those years, states agreed to establish the League of Nations
(1919) and a Permanent Court of International Justice (1920), to abolish war (the
Kellogg-Briand Pact, 1928), and to codify selected areas of international law (the Hague
Codification Conference, 1930). The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
Corresponding author:
Terry Nardin, Yale-NUS College, RC3-01-501, 28 College Avenue West, Singapore 138533.
Email: tnardin@yale-nus.edu.sg
834661IRE0010.1177/0047117819834661International RelationsNardin
research-article2019
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