Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Miles, Kate --- "History and international law: Method and mechanism – empire and ‘usual’ rupture" [2018] ELECD 127; in Schill, W. Stephan; Tams, J. Christian; Hofmann, Rainer (eds), "International Investment Law and History" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018) 136

Book Title: International Investment Law and History

Editor(s): Schill, W. Stephan; Tams, J. Christian; Hofmann, Rainer

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781786439956

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: History and international law: Method and mechanism – empire and ‘usual’ rupture

Author(s): Miles, Kate

Number of pages: 28

Abstract/Description:

This chapter considers methodological questions on the role of historical research in international law. In particular, it examines the adoption of a historical approach as an instrument of critique so as to create new understandings of historical periods and to illuminate the condition of modern international law. This approach is applied to investment law, examining early mechanisms of international law in the protection of property. In exploring this use of mechanisms as a repeated process, the chapter examines the writings of Vitoria, Grotius, and Vattel. It argues that there is a long history of designing new mechanisms to protect foreign investment, so that each one constitutes not a major change of direction or rupture, but a 'usual' change – and that this is also the case for international investment law in the 20th and 21st centuries.