This book focuses on the history of the provision of legal aid and assistance to the poor in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in eight different countries. It is the first book of its kind to summarize historical work on legal aid in a comparative perspective, allowing readers to analogize and contrast historical narratives about free legal aid across countries. Legal aid has grown as a result of industrialization, urbanization, immigration, the rise of philanthropy, and issues seen as new legal problems. The increasing professionalization of lawyers and the question of what duties lawyers owed to society to perform free work were closely related to this situation. Nevertheless, in many countries, legal aid providers included lay women and men, which sometimes led to tensions with the Bar Association. In addition, legal aid has often become deeply politicized, leading to dramatic conflicts over the rights of the poor to equal access to justice. A number of States emphasize the principle of territorial sovereignty and therefore consider that States have a free hand over their internal affairs. Other States reject this view. A group of opponents of this position, including many European nations, argue that certain standards of behavior are expected of all civilized nations, including the prohibition of genocide, slavery and the slave trade, wars of aggression, torture and piracy, and that violation of these universal norms is a crime. not just against individual victims.
but against humanity as a whole. States and individuals who subscribe to this view consider that in the case of the individual responsible for the violation of international law, „like the pirate and slave trader before him, hostis humani generis, has become an enemy of all humanity,”[32] and will therefore be prosecuted in a fair trial before any fundamentally just tribunal. through the exercise of universal jurisdiction. Traditionally, sovereign States and the Holy See have been the sole subjects of international law. With the proliferation of international organizations in the last century, they have also been recognized as concerned parties in some cases. Recent interpretations of international human rights law, international humanitarian law and international trade law (e.g. The measures in Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have targeted businesses and even individuals. For example, John H. Herz, „The National Socialist Doctrine of International Law and the Problems of International Organization,” Political Science Quarterly 54 (1939), 536-539, summarizes Nazi doctrine in order to „reduce international law to a set of rules that belong exclusively to the German legal system.
For Germany, international law is only the law governing its foreign relations that has been recognized by Germany and incorporated into its domestic law; Its validity depends on this incorporation and lasts as long as this recognition lasts, since the competence of the nation-State cannot be limited by a norm binding its sovereign will” (references omitted). He pointed out that Carl Schmitt in particular resolutely opposed the attempt to Judaize international life and to place too much emphasis on law in international relations (548, referring to National Socialism and international law, note 7, p. 396). Admittedly, the philosophical starting point of Carl Schmitt and modern critics of international law is different, but the result is similar, namely that the relevance of international law for the orientation of the conduct of States in international relations carries little or no weight and that national interests, whatever their formulation and motivation, should take precedence. The Italian peninsula, divided into various city-states with complex and often contentious relations, was then an early incubator of international law theory. The jurist and professor of law Bartolus da Saxoferrato (1313-1357), who was well acquainted with Roman and Byzantine law, contributed to the increasingly relevant field of „conflict-of-law rules”, which concerned disputes between individuals and companies in different territories; He is thus considered the founder of private international law. Another Italian jurist and professor of law, Baldus de Ubaldis (1327-1400), provided numerous commentaries and compilations of Roman, ecclesiastical and feudal law, thus creating an organized source of law to which various nations could refer. The region`s most famous contributor, Alberico Gentili (1552-1608), is considered the founder of international law and wrote one of the first works on the subject, De Legationibus Libri Tres, in 1585. He wrote several other books on various issues of international law, including De jure belli libri tres (Three books on the laws of war), which provided extensive commentaries on the laws of war and treaties. The origins of international law date back to antiquity. Early examples include the peace treaties between the Mesopotamian city-states of Lagash and Umma (circa 2100 BC). A.D.) and an agreement between the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II and the Hittite king Hattusilis III, concluded in 1258 BC.
Intergovernmental pacts and agreements of all kinds have also been negotiated and concluded by communities around the world, from the Eastern Mediterranean to East Asia. This seminar is and should be a follow-up to the November 2003 conference on the development of international law in treaty design.1 The question of the legitimacy of new forms of international law was addressed, but was neither the focus of the conference nor in the individual contributions. This seminar should also be seen as a follow-up to the workshop „American-European Dialogue: Different Perceptions of International Law”2, as it is the question of the legitimacy of international law that underlies the different perceptions.3 The sources of international law have been influenced by a number of political and legal theories. During the 20th century, it was recognized by legal positivists that a sovereign state can limit its power of action by accepting an agreement based on the principle of the treaty pacta sunt servanda. This consensual view of international law was reflected in the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice of 1920 and remains in Article 7 of the Statute of the ICJ. [26] The sources of international law applied by the international community are listed in Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, which is considered authoritative in this regard: Morgenthau asserts that no state can be compelled to submit a dispute to an international tribunal, making the laws unenforceable and voluntary. International law is also not controlled, there are no enforcement agencies. He cites a 1947 U.S. opinion poll in which 75 percent of respondents wanted „an international police force to maintain world peace,” but only 13 percent wanted that force to surpass the U.S. armed forces.
Subsequent polls produced similar contradictory results. [61] In this perspective, the creation of an international constitutional court, as discussed by F. Orrego Vicuña, „The Geology of International Law – Governance, Democracy and Legitimacy”, ZaöRV 64 (2004), 547, pp. 10 et seq., merits further consideration. Provisional National Constitution of the Republic of the Sudan, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Sudan, Special Supplement No. 1722, 10 July 2005. This is not to say that the human rights situation in the Sudan still complies with international human rights standards. Rather, the inclusion of international human rights instruments should be seen as a reaction to the current human rights situation. Theoretically, all states are sovereign and equal. Because of the concept of sovereignty, the value and authority of international law depend on the voluntary participation of States in its formulation, respect and implementation.