Chapter 7 looks into the interstices of the contemporary sovereign states system. One of the key practical effects of the normative tensions between the different understandings of property informing the practice of the sovereignty cartel is a governance gap between autonomy and multilateralism into which a variety of illicit activities falls. The chapter argues that the tensions not only create spaces in the system in which illicit activity can find a home but actually force some activity there by definition. This often involves non-sovereign actors engaged in economic pursuits, either finding the interstices of sovereignty to arbitrage regulatory gaps or forced into the interstices by those gaps. It also often involves sovereign actors taking advantage of the market value of their sovereign property rights to enrich either their states or themselves. These gaps in governance in the sovereign states system introduce places where sovereign right can be challenged. This is why a sovereignty cartel is necessary to maintain these rights. The cartel is the mechanism by which the sovereign states system polices its interstices and keeps them from undermining the prerogatives of its members.

This chapter starts from the proposition that legal substance may be inherently connected to legal form. In particular, consideration is given to the claim that individualistic norms tend to be manifested in highly administrable rules while altruistic norms lend themselves to expression as standards in the legal system. An examination of specific standards in the international legal order that provide a regulatory space for altruism ensues. In doing so, the chapter builds on the insights offered in the previous chapters on substantive international law and reveals that there are certain common legal vehicles through which altruism is compelled or promoted by the law. In a context where the altruistic behaviour of individual states waxes and wanes, the chapter concludes by making a call for greater institutionalisation of altruism.

Chapter 4 unpacks and illustrates the idea of the sovereignty cartel. It looks at some of the individual-level practices through which the sovereignty cartel is reconstituted in the daily conduct of international politics. The chapter makes the connection between sovereignty as an abstract concept and the actual people who act on the international stage in the name of that concept. It complicates the idea of property rights by discussing the responsibilities that are often part and parcel of rights. These property rights include responsibilities to other sovereigns, but also include responsibilities to the citizenries in whose name states rule. In addition, the chapter provides examples of the sovereignty cartel in action, drawn from a variety of issues, including multilateral participation, human rights, and the governance of the global commons. These all show ways in which sovereign right involves specific and historically contingent claims by states, and requires of those states specific behaviors, rather than being a generic claim that can be understood and studied out of context.

International cooperation finds application in a wide variety of domains, including peace and security, human rights, international economic relations, development and many others. This chapter considers the provision for international cooperation under specific treaty regimes as well as in the context of particular rights. Given the cross-cutting nature of international cooperation, the aim is to provide an insight into the way international cooperation can operate in practice to establish altruistic legal relationships as well as create regulatory spaces for altruistic behaviour.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of historic efforts to criminalise the unlawful use of inter-State armed force, culminating in the adoption of the crime of aggression amendments at the Review Conference of the Rome Statute in 2010 and the activation of the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction over the crime in 2017. In the course of tracing this history, the chapter explains the political and legal issues that prevented States from reaching earlier agreement over the inclusion of the crime of aggression under the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction. The chapter also outlines the approach of the balance of the book.

Chapter 5 examines the individual conduct elements of the crime of aggression, namely ‘the planning, preparation, initiation or execution, by a person in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of a State’. It considers the extent to which this language makes the crime of aggression a ‘leadership’ crime.Also examined is the individual contribution that must be made by an accused in order to reach a conclusion that an individual has ‘committed’ a crime of aggression, in particular the meaning of the terms ‘planning’, ‘preparation’, ‘initiation’, and ‘execution’, as well as the relevant mental elements. The interaction of the leadership requirement with Rome Statute provisions relating to superior orders and the responsibility of commanders and other superiors is discussed, as is the relevance of the defences of mistake of fact and mistake of law. Finally, the chapter considers the different modes of liability that attract individual criminal responsibility under Article 25(3) of the Rome Statute and whether it is theoretically possible for a leader to order, aid, abet, or attempt a crime of aggression.

This chapter explores altruistic commitments that are specifically between developed and developing countries. In particular, an emphasis is placed on the right to development, official development assistance (ODA), the right to food and particular aspects of the international economic order, as well as the special role played by the principle of solidarity in this context. Indeed, development is central to the contemporary international legal order. As such, this chapter explores the various instruments, institutions and processes that are directed at furthering the cause of development by facilitating the transfer of resources from developed to developing countries.

Chapter 6 circles back to the question of what we understand property rights to mean, earlier chapters having made a general case for property rights as a lens through which to study sovereignty and having addressed the question of who is the sovereign who holds those rights. The chapter looks at the roots of different aspects of contemporary sovereign rights in both Roman law and English contract law. It looks at what these different traditions of property have to say about sovereignty with respect to both domestic politics and international relations, and how they interact with other ideas that legitimate the modern state such as popular sovereignty and nationalism. It connects the Roman tradition with a national interest in autonomy, and the English tradition with a national interest in multilateralism. It highlights the conceptual tensions between these traditions as practiced in contemporary international relations.

This chapter considers the obligations that states are under to protect individuals in third states from harm. In particular, it analyses the duty to prevent or arrest a genocide in a third state, the emerging duty to prevent torture, and the duty to ensure respect for international humanitarian law. These all have their legal basis in multilateral treaties. Given the focus on the prevention of serious human rights abuses in other countries, consideration is also given to the responsibility to protect (R2P) doctrine, which has been endorsed by states in several multilateral instruments and represents a significant commitment by states to people beyond their borders, although it appears to have lost traction in recent years. Finally, the chapter appraises the duty to give safe haven to those fleeing persecution in their home state.

Chapter 5 delves into the relationship between sovereignty and the sovereign, and between the sovereign and the state. Who decides who is sovereign, which is to say who controls the property rights associated with state sovereignty? The chapter addresses this question, arguing that the rules about who gets to be sovereign are, at least in part, both imposed and enforced by the cartel. Which is to say that the sovereign is a member of the cartel because she is recognized as sovereign by the other members of the cartel. The norms underlying this recognition change over time, and the chapter notes four different major changes in these norms since the Westphalian settlement, from feudal to monarchical to national to territorial to citizenship legitimation. But these norms are sticky, and new ones often do not fully displace earlier ones. Sovereignty disputes are therefore often messy; not only are the norms that govern what sovereign property is mutually contradictory, but the norms governing whose property it is are mutually contradictory as well.

This concluding chapter reflects on the findings of the study and suggests what they mean for the future of altruism in international law. In particular, it assesses the threats to altruism in our world and proposes several developments that would help to safeguard the fragile promise of altruism in international law.