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Challenging the Paris Peace Treaties, State Sovereignty, and Western-Dominated International Law – The Multifaceted Genesis of the Jus Cogens Doctrine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 September 2018

FELIX LANGE
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Abstract

The genesis of the jus cogens doctrine in international law has long been associated with a turn to a more value-laden international law after the Second World War promoted by British rapporteurs in the International Law Commission. This article builds on this narrative but adds two seemingly contradictory story lines. In the 1920s and 1930s German-speaking international legal scholars like Alfred Verdross developed the concept as a tool to renounce the disliked Paris Peace Treaties in the context of increasingly aggressive German revision policies. Furthermore, after 1945 Soviet thinkers of the Khrushchev era used jus cogens to criticize Western economic and military integration, while newly independent states regarded the concept as a promising vehicle for distancing themselves from the traditional Western international legal notions in the era of decolonization. Hence, instead of embracing a progress narrative, a dark side account, or a contributionist reading of the history of international law, this article highlights the multifaceted origins of the jus cogens doctrine.

Keywords

decolonizationhistoryjus cogensNational SocialismSoviet Union
Type
INTERNATIONAL LEGAL THEORY: Symposium on the ‘Trajectories of International Legal Histories’
Information
Leiden Journal of International Law , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , December 2018 , pp. 821 - 839
Copyright
© Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law 2018 

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Footnotes

*

PhD, LL.M. (NYU), M.A., Post-Doc at Berlin Potsdam Research Group ‘International Rule of Law – Rise or Decline?’ [[email protected]].

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110 Second report on jus cogens by Dire Tladi, Special Rapporteur, UN GA, International Law Commission, Sixty-ninth session Geneva, 1 May–2 June and 3 July–4 August 2017, UN Doc. A/CN.4/706.