Building upon my previous account of the antecedents of statehood, this chapter establishes five procedural principles that further condition the emergence of new states. These principles can be split into two sets: those that establish means for state creation through which valuable politics can either be instantiated or enhanced, and those that either prohibit or restrict state creation through means that violate or disrupt political action. The first set comprises the 'recognition principle' and the 'referendum principle', which determine the legal salience of foreign recognition and independence referendums. The second set comprises the 'negative self-determination principle', the 'international peace principle', and the 'territorial integrity principle'. These three relate, respectively, to the international legal prohibitions against mass disenfranchisement and political subordination, the unlawful threat or use of force, and the violation of an established community's territorial integrity. These five principles provide a procedural framework for state creation, which, along with the antecedents of statehood, collectively comprise 'statehood as political community'.

Civil society actors play a crucial role in ensuring that breaches of environmental law are identified and reported to the bodies responsible for compliance. Nevertheless, civil society groups face severe limitations in respect of access to justice in environmental matters. In the European context, the literature concerning opportunities for legal mobilisation has long focussed on mobilisation efforts in relation to European Union environmental law, largely via national legal systems or the European Court of Justice (CJEU). Relatively underexplored, however, has been the role of (non-)compliance systems outside the EU’s institutional structure, operating with a similar geographical scope. In particular, the potential of the Convention on European Wildlife Conservation (1979) and its corresponding (non-)compliance mechanism has thus far been overshadowed by academic discourse on the mechanisms of the EU. The chapter argues that while the looming shadow of CJEU judgments lends an indispensable lever to NGOs seeking to protect biodiversity, less confrontational and civil society-oriented compliance mechanisms provide important additional avenues for legal mobilisation.

It has been nearly four decades since Felice Morgenstern delivered her ‘Lauterpacht lectures’ and published them in book form as Legal Problems of International Organizations. The book serves as something of an informal litmus test for international organization lawyers: one of those classic texts that one simply must have read at some point. Why some books acquire this status and others do not remains mysterious, something sociologists of science may wish to investigate in order to come to a general hypothesis, but in Morgenstern’s case the answer seems fairly straightforward, and consists of two, maybe three, elements.

This chapter evaluates the emergence and development of “surveillance” as the preferred non-compliance mechanism within the IMF architecture. This is thanks to its broad flexibility and original mechanism. The nature and scope of surveillance, as well as the factors explaining its success, will be assessed. In contrast, alternative dispute settlement mechanisms, such as international courts, have been resorted to in a limited way. This chapter will therefore highlight the specific role of international law within the field of international monetary relations, as well as illustrating how international monetary relations provide international law with original new tools and concepts.

This chapter aims to locate the critical juncture when securitization is – from a moral point of view – not merely permitted (and thus optional) but obligatory (mandatory). This chapter argues that securitization is morally obligatory (pro tanto) when ‘must cause’ is satisfied. This is the case when would-be securitizing actors have tried relevant less harmful alternatives and when these have failed to satisfy just cause. This view is in line with supererogationism a philosophical position that sees value in keeping morality – where possible – free from prescriptive behaviour whereby every good and right generates a moral obligation. It is argued that the value of autonomy that allows relevant actors (limited) freedom to choose on how to respond to a just cause for securitization diminishes as certainty that securitization is the best response increases. Certainty increases subject to evidence that less harmful options than securitization do not work. This chapter goes on to discuss must cause in detail on six illustrative hypothetical examples of different threat types, including drought disaster, cyberattack, and climate disaster.

This chapter focuses initially on the context within which Ratu Mara first articulated his notion of the Pacific Way, including his congenial relationship with the British colonial administration in Fiji. The next section examines another important articulation of the Pacific Way by an expatriate commentator, reflecting a much more critical approach to colonialism. But there is also a judicious appraisal of the Pacific Way’s Polynesian associations, something that compromised its ability to function as a pan-Pacific identity. Polynesian elite values are also implicated in an aversion to the adversarial nature of Western democratic politics. In (apparent) contrast, the Pacific Way is claimed to be based primarily on traditional modes of ‘consensus politics’. This issue is explored partly in comparative perspective, noting that the positing of consensus politics as an alternative to adversarial (Western) democracy has often been deployed in other post-colonial settings as a culturally more authentic expression of local political values.

This chapter discusses the political salience of the Melanesia–Micronesia–Polynesia divide and its manifestation in subregional organizations: the Melanesian Spearhead Group and the Micronesian President’s Summit along with the Micronesian Chief Executive’s Summit and the Polynesian Leaders’ Group. All operate independently of the metropolitan powers. The Melanesian approach to valuing local traditions, encapsulated in ‘kastom’ discourses, have had a distinctive anti-colonial slant, but not an explicit anti-democratic stance. Also, the fact that the Pacific Way was akin to a ‘Polynesian Way’ in its early manifestation may explain the emergence of ‘Melanesianism’ as an alternative expression of identity. Until recently, Micronesia had demonstrated the weakest of subregional identities. A common Micronesian culture has rarely been expressed and subregionalism revolved largely around pragmatic issues. In the context of contemporary Forum politics, however, an explicit Micronesian identity has been asserted vis-à-vis the other two subregions, highlighting that it is the political context that largely determines how cultural identities are deployed.

This chapter examines the role potentially played by three types of international bodies in relation to compliance with science-based treaties: non-compliance mechanisms under a treaty system; scientific committees (and other treaty bodies); and international courts or tribunals. The focus on ‘science-based’ treaties stems from the unique nature of the compliance issues that may arise in the context of treaties that govern complex technical or scientific subject matters. These three kinds of international bodies are compared to examine how they may operate in conjunction with one another, to ensure compliance of States parties with treaty obligations.

Much ink in international law scholarship has been spilled on questions of institutional design surrounding dispute settlement. Commentators over the last forty years have praised the concept of third-party dispute settlement as a great achievement in our sovereigntist discipline. These are typically State-to-State mechanisms, although not exclusively so. When we consider “compliance” in international law, most questions of design concentrate on these institutions in which one State maintains that another has violated the latter’s commitments. Today, however, the targets of international legal obligations are changing, and with them the concept of compliance. This chapter assesses trade non-compliance mechanisms (NCMs) and argues that they exhibit significant potential for expansive reach while also suffering shortcomings. The chapter closes by mapping these normative evaluations onto conventional compliance theories to draw conclusions about those theories’ resilience and flexibility before making recommendations both for trade law and international law more generally.

The international human rights regime is characterized by extensive jurisdictional overlap between global and regional institutions that address and monitor the same or closely related human rights through partly complementary, partly similar procedures. Taking Europe as an example, individuals alleging violations of the core physical integrity right to freedom from torture can lodge complaints – depending on case specifics and the State involved – with up to five different institutions. While the complaints procedures are similar in many respects, they also differ in important ones, notably the legally binding/non-binding status of their decisions and the mechanisms for supervising second-order compliance with them. The descriptive statistical data on compliance with torture-related decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, the UN Human Rights Committee and the UN Committee against Torture against European States shows that the court and committees induce compliance with their decisions similarly well with respect to findings of conditional non-refoulement violations against liberal democracies, but that the court performs better with respect to remedying actual violations.

This chapter develops an original account of political ethics, which details not only what it means to belong to a political community but also the normative contribution that politics makes to the lives of private individuals. Advancing discrete conceptions of authenticity and reasonableness, it discusses two fundamentally political duties that we owe to those who share our communities with us: duties that partly define our membership within those groups and inform the ethical value of politics as a discrete form of human activity. It also describes two ways in which politics enhances our ethical lives in instrumental terms, articulating a conception of political action that foregrounds its objective value. This argument forms the normative core of 'statehood as political community', the conception of state creation advanced within the first part of the overall text.

In 2020, the World Bank established the Dispute Resolution Services (DRS) to address complaints related to its projects through meditation, fact-finding, and similar methods. This chapter evaluates how the DRS should improve the right of access to remedy for project-affected people. First, the chapter identifies the legal and policy standards against which the DRS must be evaluated. The right of access provided by the Bank through the Inspection Panel’s compliance review process has three pillars: accessibility, effectiveness, and independence. Since the DRS aimed to enhance this right, drawing from best practices in dispute resolution, it must offer greater protections for affected people than the Panel process. Second, the chapter suggests improvements to the DRS. To increase accessibility, the Bank should enhance procedural protections and participation opportunities for affected people. To increase effectiveness, the Bank must clarify the minimum threshold for acceptable remedies and provide mandatory verification of party agreements. To increase independence, the Bank should offer more options for sequencing compliance review and dispute resolution processes.

Any organization normally determines, by express rules or otherwise, the participants in its operation and the manner of their participation. The determination should be designed to further the aims and purposes of the organization and the effectiveness of its work. This means that, beyond the enumeration of the categories of participants which may be admitted, the basis of the contribution that can be made by each needs to be considered and the principles governing admission to participation refined accordingly.

I was glad to have been invited to deliver the Hersch Lauterpacht lectures; very glad indeed for the opportunity it has given me to pay homage in a small way to someone whom I remember with respect, affection and gratitude. In preparing the lectures I was able to appreciate, once again, the great impact he had on my development and career, teaching me by example to question and to seek constructive answers related to the evolution of the law. And I say ‘evolution’ purposefully because in all his work he was aware that the world was changing too rapidly for any other approach to be valid. If I show less confidence in the future than he perhaps might have done, it may be because I do not have the same degree of courage as he did, or because the twenty-five years since his death have provided little ground for faith. I do share his conviction that any approach to the future must be based on law and on the moral precepts underlying it.