Chandler: International Justice
history of sovereignty and sovereign equality
● state equality is understood as an integral part of state sovereignty
○ Treaty of Westphalia 1648 → “no external power beyond that of the
sovereign”
■ became bases of international relations
■ originally restricted to Europe, used to justify intervention
■ because colonies did not have “empirical statehood” like them,
sovereignty did not apply
■ before intl law, IR came in the form of voluntary agreements between
sovereign states (ex. strategic alliances)
● Westphalian model came under attack with the growing importance of Non-European
states
○ Hague Conference (1899) had China, Japan, Ottoman Empire, etc.
○ Japan defeating Russia 1905 started conversations about assumptions of
racial superiority
○ 2nd Hague Conference (1907) → European countries outnumbered
○ WWI was the turning point towards juridical sovereignty:
● Woodrow Wilson at 1919 Paris Peace Conference → principle was originally
just for the new Central European states
○ Robert Lansing → the implications of this towards racial relations is
dangerous
● League of Nations mandate system
○ recognition that colonial rule could only be temporary → empire no
longer legitimate
○ sovereign equality still applied to a select few.
● WWII → UN Charter
○ emergence of the USSR, national liberation struggles in Asia, Middle East,
Africa, ideologies of race and empire gone now that Nazis were defeated
○ led to nominal great-power acceptance of a law-bound intl system
○ concept of sovereign equality:
■ intl community recognises states as equal
■ Article 2(1) — the principle of sovereign equality
■ Article 1(2) and 55 — the respect for the principle of equal
rights and self-determination of peoples
■ new nations granted sovereign rights, while sovereignty of state
powers had to be restricted
■ legal restrictions on the right to wage war
■ legal authority now not from wealth/ might but from nationhood.
○ the UN did not realise full sovereign equality !!
■ SC and the issue with P5
■ (UNGA gives equal rep, though.)
○ principle of non-intervention:
■ legal monopoly on the use of force resides in the UN
■ Article 2(4) — all members shall refrain in their intl relations from the
threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political
independence of any state, or in any manner consistent with the
purposes of the UN
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