This chapter observes instances in which the World Court has recognised that certain sources of international law may confer rights for individuals. It first identifies cases where the Court has interpreted relevant provisions of other international treaties, beyond the international human rights framework, as conferring rights on individual. In so doing, it analyses where the Court has applied ‘textualist’ and ‘intentionalist’ approaches to reach its conclusions. The chapter then notes where the Court has identified customary international law, the existence of which would confer rights to private persons in specific contexts. It notes that while there are ambiguities in the Court’s methods, this is characteristic of its approach to sources more broadly

This part focuses on the foundational aspects of international human rights law, exploring its theoretical, historical, and philosophical underpinnings. It examines the evolution of human rights ideas, the influence of various philosophical traditions, and the ongoing debates about the nature and universality of human rights. The sections address the epistemological ruptures between philosophy and law, and between law and justice, highlighting the challenges in reconciling these perspectives within a coherent human rights framework. The part also delves into normative pluralism, discussing the coexistence and interaction of multiple legal systems and norms within the global human rights framework. It covers treaty-based structures, customary international law, general principles of law, and the role of judicial decisions and soft law instruments. By critically analyzing these foundational elements, this part aims to provide a deeper understanding of the principles and values that underpin international human rights law and to highlight the complexities and nuances involved in defining and protecting human rights in diverse cultural and legal contexts.

As the United States expanded west, it encountered the tribes of the Great Plains. Many of these tribes had military cultures. Their warriors were skilled with the horse and gun, making them formidable foes. Unable to defeat them militarily, the United States slaughtered their primary food source – the buffalo. Lack of food forced warriors to lay down their arms and agree to life on reservations. On reservations, tribes were supposed to be able to self-govern, but the federal government exerted extreme control over tribes. When the Supreme Court ruled intratribal crimes were beyond the United States jurisdiction, Congress enacted the Major Crimes Act (MCA). The MCA allowed the United States to prosecute Indians for committing crimes against another Indian while on a reservation. Although the Supreme Court acknowledged that no constitutional provision enabled Congress to pass the law, the Court held Congress could enact the law because Indians were “the wards of the nation.”

The relevant international treaty-based law on corruption, human rights and the environment, with a focus on the convergence of these areas of law. Anti-corruption treaties, especially UNCAC, and human rights treaties are both moving towards recognition of the commonalities. Traces 3 approaches to convergence: corruption as background/context, a human-rights based approach, and a human right to be free of corruption.

Readers are presented with achievable reforms of laws and policies discussed in earlier chapters.

An in-depth and personal view of removal and homesteading in Colorado, through the experience of the Ute Tribes and Ferry Carpenter, ranch owner, and the first director of the Federal Grazing Service.

Describes complexity of ranching for Tribal members on reservations, due to historical removal of Tribes, allotment of their lands, and resulting jurisdictional barriers.

Chapter 3 reconstructs the functioning of the European legislative process in practice. To this end, it systematizes the main normative instruments that steer and discipline the behavior of European political actors and civil servants, including the (rather bare) Treaty provisions, the relevant interinstitutional agreements, the European Parliament’s Rules of Procedure, and the provisions set out in internal documents, especially administrative circulars. This chapter posits that administrative circulars are important for institutional interactions, as they contribute to regularizing the conduct of political actors (regulative component), creating normative expectations (normative component), and generating values, beliefs, and assumptions that actors internalize and accept as part of their “repertoire of unquestioned routines and habits” (cultural-cognitive component). As far as trilogues are concerned, all these provisions testify to the existence of a norms-based, institutionalized environment, congenial to legal analysis.

Chapter 4 surveys a wide range of friendly and hostile interstate relations in ancient societies, where war was often the normal state of affairs. Notwithstanding the numerous conflicts, polities tried in the end, through alliances and diplomatic relations, to establish peaceful relations in view of political stability and economic prosperity. The chapter analyses hospitality rules regarding foreigners, treaties between polities and the establishment of diplomatic relations, which emerged as an international system in the ancient Near East during the mid-fourteenth century bce. An alternative to diplomacy in conflict management, typical of the Greek world, was arbitration and mediation with the help of a third party. In a final section, the chapter outlines how states, when diplomacy failed, started a war procedurally. In conclusion, the chapter argues that, in the absence of an international court, the enforcement of diplomatic rules and treaties was in many ancient societies ensured by the supranational authority of the gods.

This chapter explores the way in which Shelley’s verse speaks to, and influences, two kinds of texts: the treaties between the various Indigenous peoples of North America and European or settler governments, and Indigenous-authored poetry that interacts with these treaties. The chapter will begin by conceptualizing 1819 (an iconic year in Shelley studies) as a “treaty year,” one in which Shelley’s “England in 1819” and The Mask of Anarchy, despite their apparent focus on domestic politics, can be read alongside major global diplomatic events that occurred in settler-Indigenous relationships in North America. The chapter then turns to late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Native American poets who used Shelley’s political poetry as a source for considering treaties and the disastrous consequences of colonization, including the Cherokee authors John Rollin Ridge and Too-qua-stee, James Roane Gregory (Yuchi and Muscogee/Creek), and Arsenius Chaleco (Yuma). Their different allusions to and adoptions of Shelley’s 1819 poems in their poems demonstrate that both “England in 1819” and The Mask of Anarchy were interpreted by Indigenous poets as highly relevant to their contemporary concerns about broken treaties. Finally, the chapter considers the ways in which Shelley’s more meditative poems, including “To a Skylark” and “Mont Blanc,” might also be drawn into a wider conversation about colonization, treaty-making, and Indigenous peoples.

This chapter examines the ways in which the sovereign, monocultural, and monist state that was dominant in Latin America starting in the nineteenth century has mutated over the last thirty-six years. It begins by offering a description of the initially dominant model and then introduces the multicultural liberal and radical intercultural models that replaced it by politically and legally recognizing the cultural diversity that characterizes Latin American societies. The chapter then explores the discursive and practical challenges generated by illegal normative systems (such as those managed by guerilla or paramilitary groups, or criminal organizations), and by extralegal normative system (such as the regulation of private property in peripheral urban neighborhoods) which compete with the sovereignty of states and official law. The constitutional bloc, the Inter-American Human Rights System, and bilateral or multilateral treaties signed by Latin American states further pluralize legal creation and weaken the concept of absolute state sovereignty. This chapter characterizes these developments as instances of either weak or strong legal pluralism.

This chapter examines the history and development of collective self-defence. It is argued that – contrary to the common assertion that the concept was created in 1945 – its roots can be seen throughout history. The chapter maps that history, starting briefly with the alliances of ancient Greece and moving through to the writings of the seventeenth century, when recognisable characteristics of the modern concept truly began to emerge. It then focuses on the developments in the interwar years and during the Second World War, which saw an increase in the number of collective defence treaties. This period concluded with the emergence of a collective defence system in the Americas, which was extremely influential for the drafting of Article 51 of the UN Charter. The chapter concludes by analysing the drafting process, and the changes to collective self-defence that the adoption of the Charter brought about. It is argued that Article 51 ‘conjoined’ individual and collective self-defence in a way that had little basis in the previous historical development of collective defence arrangements under international law. This has had significant implications for how collective self-defence is understood today.

This chapter examines collective self-defence treaty arrangements. It engages with a diverse range of examples of the collective self-defence treaties (or treaties that contain collective self-defence aspects) that have emerged since 1945 to draw out common themes as to the nature, process, and role of such arrangements, as well as to establish notable variations. The aim is to contribute an overall picture of collective self-defence today specifically in the context of treaty relationships. The chapter argues that such relationships inevitably impose only weak obligations on their parties to defend each other and also can cause notable issues related to overlapping memberships, bureaucracy, and antagonism amongst members (amongst other difficulties). Equally, these arrangements – of which there are now hundreds – are concluded for good reason(s). They provide a range of benefits, especially in terms of their deterrent effect.

Chapter 2, ‘Finding Support for Indigenous Peoples’ Participation in the Sources of International Law’, turns to a doctrinal analysis. It undertakes an examination of relevant sources of international law on self-determination and Indigenous peoples’ rights, in treaties, declarations, and decisions of international judicial and quasi-judicial bodies. We see how the law of self-determination has been interpreted by the latter bodies as meaning – among other things – participation of peoples at the national (but not necessarily the international) level, and how participation is at the heart of the law on self-determination specific to Indigenous peoples. The chapter then turns to customary international law, reviewing and contextualizing various methodologies for its identification and summarizing how the evidence described in later chapters can be interpreted through these methodologies. Through these lenses, I discuss methodological debates, including the legal status we should assign to the UNDRIP in and of itself, how a provision of the UNDRIP might later crystallize into a rule of custom, and how to regard international organizations in relation to the identification of custom.