Great Powers and Outlaw States: Unequal Sovereigns in the International Legal Order

by Gerry Simpson

• ISBN13: 9780521534901
• ISBN10: 0521534909
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-05-24
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The presence of Great Powers and outlaw states is a central but under-explored feature of international society. In this book, Gerry Simpson describes the ways in which an international legal order based on 'sovereign equality' has accommodated the Great Powers and regulated outlaw states since the beginning of the nineteenth-century. In doing so, the author offers a fresh understanding of sovereignty which he terms juridical sovereignty to show how international law has managed the interplay of three languages: the languages of Great Power prerogative, the language of outlawry (or anti-pluralism) and the language of sovereign equality. The co-existence and interaction of these three languages is traced through a number of moments of institutional transformation in the global order from the Congress of Vienna to the 'war on terrorism'.

Table of Contents

Foreword Professor James Crawford

Preface

Acknowledgements

Part I. Introduction: 1. Great powers and outlaw states

Part II. Concepts: 2. Sovereign equalities

3. Legalised hierarchies

Part III. Histories: Great Powers: 4. Legalised hegemony: Vienna to The Hague 1815-1906

5. 'Extreme equality': rupture at The Hague 1907

6. The great powers, sovereign equality and the making of the UN charter: San Francisco 1945

7. Holy alliances: Verona 1818 and Kosovo 1999

Part IV. Histories: Outlaw States: 8. Unequal sovereigns 1815-1839

9. Peace-loving nations: 1945

10. Outlaw states: 1999

Part V. Conclusion: 11. Arguing about Afghanistan: great powers and outlaw states redux

12. The puzzle of sovereignty.