Beyond Responsibility to Protect Generating Change in International Law

by Barnes, Richard; Tzevelekos, Vassilis

• ISBN13: 9781780682648
• ISBN10: 1780682646
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2016-03-30
• Publisher: Intersentia

Summary

The history of international law is replete with concepts that have generated change: individual criminal responsibility, common heritage of mankind and sustainable development to name but a few. These are concepts that have influenced the scope, structure and purpose of international law. This book explores the extent to which Responsibility to Protect (R2P) possesses the same transformative potential, showing how R2P shifts our understanding of both the potential and practice of international law. Responsibility to Protect is both an ambitious and an ambiguous concept in international law. Ambiguity creates space for debate and the potential for legal development, but it may also generate misunderstanding, false expectations and uncertainty. Despite its ambiguity, R2P has quickly found a place within international legal texts. At the same time its ambiguity or rather the tensions the concept generates has also helped generate an enormous range of scholarship. This collection of essays presents a more fundamental critical evaluation of R2P, exploring how it interacts with existing concepts and values, and how this influences normative developments within international law. In particular, the essays explore the influence of R2P upon sovereignty as responsibility, the continued advance of positive human rights obligations and the safeguarding of international community interests.These themes are explored in a range of essays written by new and established scholars. The essays explore the moral and political foundations of R2P, the expansion of R2P to non-state actors, and the interaction between R2P and certain branches of international law, such as use of force, responsibility as liability, humanitarian law and international criminal law.

Author Biography

Richard Barnes is Professor of Law at the University of Hull, United Kingdom, where he is Director of the McCoubrey Centre for International Law. He has lectured and written widely on the law of the sea and international law.  Noted publications include “Law of the Sea: Progress and Prospects (2006) and Property Rights and Natural Resources” (2008). The latter was awarded the SLS Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship in 2009. More recent publications have focused on irregular maritime migration, search and rescue at sea, Arctic fisheries, control of offshore renewable energy, and the governance of areas beyond national jurisdiction. He has acted as an advisor for a number of governmental and private agencies on maritime and marine issues, including EU Parliament groups, the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the WWF, and the International Transport Workers Federation. He is an editor of the International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law, with responsibility for current legal developments, and sits on the editorial board of the New Zealand Yearbook of International Law.

Vassilis P. Tzevelekos is a Senior Lecturer in Public International Law at the University of Hull Law School, a member of the McCoubrey Centre for International Law and an Athens qualified lawyer. He is specialising in the theory of public international law and in international and European human rights law. He holds a PhD from the European University Institute and in recent years he has been a visiting scholar at Columbia Law School and a research scholar at the University of Michigan Law School.

With contributions by: Richard A. Barnes, Vassilis P. Tzevelekos, Henry Jones, Markus P. Beham, Ralph R.A. Janik, Tony Ward, Nabil Hajjami, John Heieck, Julia Schmidt, Nigel D. White, Antal Berkes, Jennifer Dee Halbert, Hitoshi Nasu, Humberto Cantú Rivera, Kasey L. McCall-Smith, Lucas Lixinski, Sophie Rondeau, Raphaël van Steenberghe, David Turns, Vito Todeschini, Barbara Sonczyk, Lindsay Moir, Ludovica Poli, Tomoko Yamashita, Lenneke Sprik, Elena Katselli and Nicholas Tsagourias.