TRANSITIONS, INTERNATIONAL LAW AND GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

THE EVOLUTION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

Theme 1: In the late 19th century, the leading European states established modern international law and used it to justify their colonization of much of Africa, Asia and the Pacific on the grounds that sovereignty was the prerogative of the European ‘civilized’ states, not the ‘non-civilized’ ones. With the gradual retreat of imperial and colonial power after WWI and WWII, the number of states recognized under international law rapidly expanded as the legal basis of sovereignty evolved from control over territory, to the right of self-determination, and to state endorsement of universal principles. The global project of transitional justice represents the latest stage in the evolution of global governance of a world of states through their integration, by consent, into the liberal global order founded on the legal and political universalisms of human rights and democracy. The transitional justice project is informed by a progressive, aspirational and utopian view of history in which public international law provides a vision of a cosmopolitan future of ‘a united humanity governed by law’. International law exists as ‘a promise of justice’ in a world imagined as governed by cosmopolitan public institutions. From an historical perspective, the transitional justice project embodies the paradox of contemporary international law. On the one hand, the jurisdiction of international law is seen as universal, based on legal principles, and not state sovereignty; on the other hand, the nation-state remains the basic political unit upon which the international legal order is constituted.