International Law and Organization: An Introduction

Reviewed in International Relations Vol14 No4 April 1999 byVLADIMIR MATVEYEV, Moscow State Institute of InternationalRelations...Professor Van Dervort has written a most comprehensiveand authoritative textbook on contemporary internationallaw. Containing, as it does, carefully chosen legal documents, thebook is of indispensable value for both students and teachers. Theauthor's logical and elegant narration ensures that it will sparkgeneral interest in international law.Van Dervort contests theerroneous, through widespread, assumption that international law is adry and dull subject, unrealistically normative and without muchrelevance to world politics and international relations. In Part I hetraces the long evolution of international law and the history ofinternational organization, linking these logically with the historyof international relations and a general world history. He begins withancient Rome, concentrating particularly on Roman jus gentium whichwas designed to govern the relations of non-Romans in the Roman Empireas well as relationships between Romans and non-Romans. Arguing thatcontemporary international law is basically a product of Westerncivilization, Van Dervort follows its evolution through the crucialevents in the history of Western Christendom, namely through theRenaissance and Reformation and the rise of the nation state inEurope. Particular attention is paid to the 19th century Concert ofEurope which, for the first time since the rise of the nation state,provided an international organization, albeit an informal one, whichsuccessfully maintained a general peace in Europe for a century. Thediplomatic activity of the major European powers within the frameworkof the Concert of Europe gave impetus to the expansion ofinternational legal regulation in various fields, to the establishmentin 1900 of the Permanent Court of Arbitration as a follow up to theHague Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes,and to the creation of the first permanently functioningintergovernmental organizations (the International Telegraphic Unionin 1865 and the Universal Postal Union in 1874). But mankind had toundergo immense suffering in two world wars in the twientieth centurybefore it appreciated the absolute necessity of establishinginternational political organizations with wide responsibilities forthe maintenance of international peace and security. The period afterthe Second World War witnessed a fundamental change in internationallaw with the prohibition of the use of force against the territorialintegrity or political independence of any state. Summing up hishistorical overview, the author concludes, `the emergence of aworldwide community of nations with a functioning set ofdifferentiated political decision-making institutions, and a set oflegal principles that define its functions, is the most importantdevelopment of the twentieth century'. While viewing the UnitedNations as the key coordinating set of internationalproble