A discussion with Ingrid Weurth Brunk of Vanderbilt University Law School and Monica Hakimi of Columbia University Law School, on their recent law review article on the prohibition against annexation. They are argue that the prohibition against the annexation of territory is related to and has emerged from three other fundamental principles of international law – namely the prohibition against the use of force, the right to self-determination, and the principle of territorial sovereignty – but that it is nonetheless distinct from each of these, and that this distinction is important. The significance of the principle has been obscured and it is too often conflated with the prohibition on the use of force, in ways that have important theoretical and practical implications for the jus ad bellum. We discuss all of this, and the ways in which they argue that the principle is under threat, and possibly in the process of being eroded, with significant implications for not only jus ad bellum but international law and the inter-state system itself. A fascinating discussion about a really important piece of scholarship.
Materials:
– “The Prohibition of Annexations and the Foundations of Modern International Law,” American Journal of International Law (forthcoming, 2024).
Reading Recommendations:
– Timothy Waters, Boxing Pandora: Rethinking Borders, States, and Secession in a Democratic World (2020).
– Naz Modirzadeh, “‘Let Us All Agree to Die a Little’: TWAIL’s Unfilfilled Promise, 65 Harvard International Law Journal 79 (2023).
– Juan Pablo Scarfi, “Latin America and the Idea of Peace,” The Oxford Handbook of Peace History (Charles Howlett, ed., 2022).
– Natasha Wheatley, The Life and Death of States: Central Europe, and the Transformation of Modern Sovereignty (2023).