"The book delivers a comprehensive overview of the foundational concepts, principles, sources, and institutions of the international legal system and how they are experienced and practiced domestically and in foreign relations"--

This unique book brings together leading experts from diverse areas of public international law to offer a comprehensive overview of the approaches to evolutionary interpretation in different international legal regimes. It begins by asking what interpretation is, offering the views of expert authors on the question, its components and definitions. It then comments on situations that have called for evolutionary interpretation in different international legal regimes, including general international law, environmental law, human rights law, EU law, investment law, international trade law, and how domestic courts have, on occasions, interpreted treaties and other international legal instruments in an evolutionary manner. This timely, authoritative compendium offers an in-depth understanding of the processes at work in evolutionary interpretation as well as a prime selection of the current trends and future challenges.

Nicholas Onuf’s International Legal Theory: Essays and Engagements 1966-2007 is a collection of the author’s articles and book reviews from the period, including some previously unpublished material. The book records the author’s efforts to address important problems in international legal theory and to engage other scholars who were also addressing these problems. As well as demonstrating Onuf’s own constructivist contribution to the theoretical dimension of international law and international relations, each piece is preceded by a short introduction which highlights the wider themes and developments which have occurred in the field of international law in the last forty years.

This book provides the first comprehensive analysis of factors that transform a prima facie non-international armed conflict (NIAC) into an international armed conflict (IAC) and the consequences that follow from this process of internationalization. It examines in detail the historical development as well as the current state of the relevant rules of international humanitarian law. The discussion is grounded in general international law, complemented with abundant references to case law, and illustrated by examples from twentieth and twenty-first century armed conflicts. In Part I, the book puts forward a thorough catalogue of modalities of conflict internationalization that includes outside intervention, State dissolution, and recognition of belligerency. It then specifically considers the legal qualification of complex situations that feature more than two conflict parties and contrasts the mechanism of internationalization of armed conflicts with the reverse process of de-internationalization. Part II of the book challenges the conventional wisdom that members of non-State armed groups do not normally benefit from combatant status. It argues that the majority of fighters belonging to non-State armed groups in most types of internationalized armed conflicts are in fact eligible for combatant status. Finally, Part III turns to belligerent occupation, traditionally understood as a leading example of a notion that cannot be transposed to armed conflicts occurring in the territory of a single State. By contrast, the book argues in favour of the applicability of the law of belligerent occupation to internationalized armed conflicts.

If a treaty from the 1850s regulating 'commerce' or forbidding 'degrading treatment of persons' is to be interpreted 150 years later, does 'commerce' or 'degrading treatment of persons' have the same meaning at the time of interpretation as they had when the treaty was agreed? The evolutionary interpretation of treaties has proven one of the most controversial topics in the practice of international law. Indeed, it has been seen as going against the very grain of the law of treaties, and has been argued to be contrary to the intention of the parties, breaching the principle of consent. This book asks what the place of evolutionary interpretation is within the understanding of treaties, at a time when many important international legal instruments are over 50 years old. It sets out to place the evolutionary interpretation of treaties on a firm footing within the general rule of interpretation, as codified in Article 31 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. The book demonstrates that the evolutionary interpretation of treaties - in common with all other types of interpretation such as good faith, the text of the treaty, context, object and purpose - is in fact a based upon an objective understanding of the intention of the parties. In order to marry intention and evolution in this way, the book argues that, on the one hand, evolutionary interpretation is the product of the correct application of Article 31 and, on the other, that Article 31 is geared towards the establishment of the intention of the parties. The evolutionary interpretation of treaties is therefore shown to represent an intended evolution.