Post WWI – The rise and fall of international law

By Dr Melanie Klinkner, Senior Lecturer in Law.

World War I, though centred in Europe, was a global war initially involving the Allies on the one side, and the Central Powers on the other, but other countries were drawn into the conflict, turning it into the largest war in history. A staggering 9 million combatants were killed and this large cost of life galvanised many legal and political minds to try and avoid such future bloodshed by working towards peace and stability.

The Treaty of Versailles is perhaps best known for the demands placed on Germany to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions, and pay reparations to certain countries, but the Treaty has also great significance for international law. The League of Nations was established, as outlined in the Versailles Treaty of 1919, to steer away from the traditional power-distribution through injecting some more democratic and open elements. Its main goal was to maintain world peace and the idea goes back to 1795 and Immanuel Kant’s ‘Perpetual Peace: A philosophical sketch’. Kant’s notion of a peaceful world community did not lie in the creation of a global government, also rejected by the League of Nations, but in the hope that States would be free, respecting their citizens and welcoming foreign visitors as fellow rational beings.

One requirement in the Covenant of the League was that States, before resorting to war, had to exhaust judicial or political dispute settlement processes. In a further attempt to promote peace, the 1928 Pact of Paris, State parties forswore the resort to peace as means of national politics – though this initiative was hardly successful as ultimately evidenced by the Second World War. It is ironic that the 1919 Peace Treaty designed to end all wars led to a war which is unique so far in terms of non-combatant deaths – World War Two.

Noteworthy for international criminal law, the Treaty of Versailles also wanted the question examined whether war crimes trials for the defeated German Elite, including the Kaiser, were an option. The Commission on the Responsibilities of the Authors of War were divided on the issue. The majority recommended inter alia the establishment of a tribunal to prosecute suspected war criminals including the prosecution of defeated heads of state. Though an international Tribunal was not established, some German individuals accused of war crimes were tried in 1921 by the German authorities in the Leipzig War Crimes Trials.

But the inter-war period was fruitful in other ways through international legal innovations such as the creation of a World Court in 1922, optimistically called the Permanent Court of Justice. Whilst the Court did not have compulsory jurisdiction over all disputes, through deciding cases, a substantial body of international jurisprudence emerged. One such example considered to be an important foundation of international law is the Lotus Principle suggesting that States may act in any way they wish so long as they do not contravene an explicit prohibition.

Ambitious efforts were also made to codify international law. The prime example is the 1933 Montevideo Convention setting out the definition, rights and duties of statehood. Article 1 is best-known as it spells out the four criteria for statehood which remain relevant to this day.

The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.

Clearly some of the creations from this inter-war period had a short life, though many of the ideas and concepts have survived or been re-incarnated in the aftermath of the WWII. In fact, international lawyers became ‘heroic crusaders’ post 1945, building a new world; The United Nations replaced the League of Nations, the International Court of Justice the Permanent Court of Justice, and German and Japanese leaders faced trials for crimes under international law in Nuremberg and Tokyo.

No doubt, international law failed in avoiding carnage and maintaining world peace demonstrating its key weakness – the implementation of its norms is linked to political will.

BU academic writes on Ukraine and Crimea

Sascha-Dominik Bachmann, Associate Professor in Law at Bournemouth University, has written about the current situation in Crimea and the Ukraine on law website Jurist.com.

The article, titled ‘Crimea and Ukraine 2014: A Brief Reflection on Russia’s Protective Interventionalism’ outlines the reactions of both sides as the crisis in Crimea escalates.

In the article Bachmann outlined the current situation, drawing comparison with the invasion of Georgia in 2008, and Bachmann goes on to write about the reaction of Ukraine’s interim government, the involvement of Russian military, and the role that NATO plays in the conflict.

Bachmann writes, “Russia seems to be achieving its strategic and economic objectives: the weakening of a pro-Western Ukraine, the isolation of critical armaments industries [PDF] located in the eastern parts of the country—which possess a potential opportunity of being utilized further if any negotiated division of the country were to take place—and finally a reassertion of Russian influence along the fault lines of the century old Russian state influence that had become questionable after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.”

You can read the article in full on the JURIST website.

Dr David McQueen on the current conflicts in Cairo

Bournemouth University’s lecturer in Politics and Media, and expert in global conflict, Dr David McQueen featured on Steve Harris’ Drivetime show on BBC Radio Solent giving his opinion on the current conflict and civil unrest in Egypt.

“I think that this is a tragic short lived experiment of democracy, I don’t think it had to turn out this way and there were many missed opportunities for resolution within the brotherhood and the government” Dr McQueen explained.

The discussion continued with Barrack Obama condemning on the violence; “I think the US government could’ve played a part by saying if there was any army coo they could help the Egyptian army out”.

“The US Army fund the Egyptian army One Billion Dollars a year”

Dr McQueen relates the public reaction of what is happening now in Egypt to the 1972 Bloody Sunday reactions.

“When we look at thousands of deaths of armed protestors, I just see very dark days ahead for Egypt”.

Dean Eastmond

Dean is a student at Budmouth College in Weymouth, who is working at Bournemouth University in the Press and PR Department. He joined BU on a Sir Samuel Mico Scholarship, which provides 10 students from his college with essential work experience for four weeks over the summer.