Detlev F. Vagts

Bio: Detlev F. Vagts is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: International law & Law of war. The author has an hindex of 13, co-authored 61 publications receiving 595 citations.

Hegemonic International Law

Abstract: Article 2 (4). The innocent party would have the right of self-defense under Article 51, which is exercisable at its sole volition. It could also appeal to the Council to institute collective measures against its attacker under Chapter VII. Any other reading of Article 51 would base the right of self-defense not on a victim state's \"inherent\" powers of self-preservation, but upon its ability, in the days following an attack, to convince the fifteen members of the Security Council that it has indeed correctly identified its attacker. As a matter of strategic practice, any attacked state is very likely to make an intense effort to demonstrate the culpability of its adversary, limited only by inhibitions regarding the operational effect of sharing intelligence methods. As a matter of law, however, there is no requirement whatever that a state receive the blessing of the Security Council before responding to an armed attack. Were this not so, how many states would deliberately agree to subordinate their security to the Council's assessment of the probity of the evidence on which they based their defensive strategy of self-preservation?

International Law in the Third Reich

Abstract: What justifies asking American readers to take time in 1990 to review German international law during the Third Reich, which ended in 1945? First, it is a dramatic story. People who hold certain views on international law are dismissed, exiled, imprisoned and even hanged. The penalties for disagreement are far more severe than tenured faculty members of the 1990s would even dream. Second, the peculiarities of the period enable one to develop some hypotheses about the interactions in the law among people, institutions, ideas and policies in a way that is starker and clearer than the path one must try to trace in calmer times when movements are more gradual and subtle. It is in a sense a not-to-be-repeated laboratory test of how far a ruthless regime can impose a radical change in thinking on a community of legal scholars. The very repulsiveness of some of the concepts enables one to distance oneself from them and regard them as objects of disinterested scrutiny. Finally, the period is widely ignored, even in Germany, in the literature on the history of international law and in many other subsequent studies that seem to demand some reference to events and writings of that time. Although a few highly useful works have appeared, mostly on limited aspects of the scene, the field is clearly understudied. It is perhaps most strikingly so in the work of those authors who since 1945 have not mentioned what they themselves wrote in the period 1933-1945. In general, the German legal community has only recently started to investigate what happened to law in that period.

The Balance of Power in International Law: A History of an Idea

Abstract: The existence of a significant relationship between the concept of the balance of power and international law would be regarded as improbable by most modern international lawyers. They would think of the balance as a wholly obsolete conception and, in any case, as a part of international policy, or worse, part of cynical Realpolitik rather than of law. Earlier generations of jurists, however, did see international equilibrium either as an integral part of the system of rules of the law of nations or at least as a necessary precondition to the existence of such a law. Such a view of the interrelationship was never unanimous; indeed, there were in the past many legal observers who saw the balance of power as an obstacle to the development of an international legal order based on something more moral than force alone. This article is devoted to a study of the relationships between those two concepts as seen by the publicists who created the corpus of international law, principally during the period from the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. It is not a study of the balance of power at large—a topic to which volumes might be dedicated—but only of that idea’s relationship with law.

The Hague Conventions and Arms Control

Abstract: The Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907, and the conventions they produced, opened the doors-just barely-to the era of arms control But they did so in a way that would not have been expected Arms control can be understood as having two main branches-the quantitative and the qualitative "Quantitative"refers to controls that permit a given category of weapons-such as battleships, nuclear warheads, and antiballistic missile systems-but restrict the number that each of the participating powers may hold "Qualitative" refers to prohibitions on the use of specified items-such as explosive bullets, poison gas, and bacteriological weapons Curiously, it was the matter of quantitative control-the desire to check the costs of the arms race-that led to the calling of the Hague Conferences, but their only arms control outcome concerned qualitative limitations One can trace influences of the Hague experience in this regard on both sides of the arms control movement after World War I and more faintly after World War II, though its descent is less clear than that of the prisoner-of-war conventions and other law of war rules The inclination of scholars and policymakers to neglect the arms control efforts made between the two world wars has tended to obscure the indirect influence of the Hague Conferences

Imperialism, sovereignty, and the making of international law

Abstract: Acknowledgements Table of cases Table of treaties Introduction 1. Francisco de Vitoria and the colonial origins of international law (i) Introduction (ii) Vitoria and the problem of universal law (iii) War, sovereignty and the transformation of the Indian (iv) Conclusion 2. Finding the peripheries: colonialism in nineteenth-century international law (i) Introduction (ii) Elements of positivist jurisprudence (iii) Defining and excluding the uncivilized (iv) Native personality and managing the colonial encounter (v) Reconceptualizing sovereignty 3. Colonialism and the birth of international institutions: the mandate of the League of Nations (i) Introduction (ii) Creation of the mandate system (iii) The league of nations and the new international law (iv) The mandate system and colonial problems (v) The mandate system and the construction of the non-European state (vi) Government, sovereignty, and economy (vii) The mandate and the discussion of sovereignty (viii) The legacies of the mandate system: toward the present (ix) Conclusion 4. Sovereignty and the post-colonial state (i) Introduction (ii) Decolonization and the universality of international law (iii) Development, nationalism and the post-colonial state (iv) Development and the reform of international law (v) Permanent sovereignty over natural resource and the new international economic order (vi) The 1962 resolution on PSNR (vii) The 1974 charter of rights and duties among states (viii) Colonialism and the emergence of transnational law (ix) Sources of law and international contracts (x) Overview and conclusions 5. Governance and globalization, civilization and commerce (i) Introduction (ii) Good governance and the third world (iii) Governance, human rights and the universal (iv) International financial institutions, human rights and good governance (v) International financial institutions and the mandate system (vi) Conclusions and overview 6. On making war on the terrorists: imperialism as self-defense (i) Introduction (ii) The war against terrorism (WAT) (iii) The United States and imperial democracy (iv) Historical origins: war, conquest and self-defense (v) Terrorism and the United Nations: a Victorian moment (vi) Terrorism, self-defense and third world sovereignty Conclusion.

On the Rule of Law: History, Politics, Theory

Abstract: The rule of law is the most important political ideal today, yet there is much confusion about what it means and how it works. This 2004 book explores the history, politics, and theory surrounding the rule of law ideal, beginning with classical Greek and Roman ideas, elaborating on medieval contributions to the rule of law, and articulating the role played by the rule of law in liberal theory and liberal political systems. The author outlines the concerns of Western conservatives about the decline of the rule of law and suggests reasons why the radical Left have promoted this decline. Two basic theoretical streams of the rule of law are then presented, with an examination of the strengths and weaknesses of each. The book examines the rule of law on a global level, and concludes by answering the question of whether the rule of law is a universal human good.

Globalization and Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract: First, we will explain the concept of globalization. We will describe its conceptual variants and point to some of the phenomena that are associated with this process. Next we will describe the traditional paradigm of CSR where the responsibilities of businesses are discussed vis-a-vis a more or less properly working nation state system and a homogenous moral (cultural) community. We will argue that both these assumptions become problematic in the current 'post-national constellation' (Habermas 2001). We describe the new situation with regulatory gaps in global regulation, an erosion of national governance (loss of national sovereignty and the exterritorial application of national law), and a loss in moral and cultural homogeneity in the corporate environment. We discuss the consequences of the post-national constellation with the help of two recent observations of business firms' behavior which call for a fresh view on the concept of CSR. We describe the necessary paradigm shifts toward a new politically enlarged concept of CSR in a globalized world.

Education, Productivity, and Inequality: The East African Natural Experiment

Abstract: Drawing on the experiences of Kenya and Tanzania, investigates how the expansion of the educational system affects productivity and the growth and distribution of income. Explains that Kenya and Tanzania, with their similar colonial background, natural resources, and economic structure, but markedly divergent educational policies, constitute a "natural experiment." Obtains measures of both reasoning ability and cognitive skill from surveys of representative samples of urban wage employees, allowing the development of a model to evaluate the human capital, screening, and credentialist interpretations of the link between educational attainment and earnings. Evaluates competing explanations for the steeper earnings-experience profile of the more educated. Estimates the effects of country differences in the quantity and quality education on output. Analyzes occupation as an important intermediary between education and earnings. Isolates the effect that institutional intervention by the government has on the wage structure. Measures the responsiveness of the wages of secondary and primary leavers to changes in their relative supply. Examines how levels of inequality change in response to changes in the composition of the workforce that result from educational expansion. Considers the equality of the distribution of school places in Kenya and Tanzania. Explores whether the expansion of secondary enrollment in Kenya, and the contrasting situation in Tanzania, have affected the degree of intergenerational mobility and the process of class formation. Examines methodological and policy issues in the cost-benefit analysis and in the financing of secondary education. Considers the implications of the findings for future research and the extent to which the results can be generalized to other countries and situations. A companion volume, Education, Work and Pay in East Africa, describes the economies and education systems of Kenya and Tanzania, and contains an annotated set of cross-tabulations and other summary statistics based on East African surveys. Knight is a Senior member of the research staff at the Institute of Economics and Statistics. Sabot is Professor of Economics at Williams College. Index.

Subsidiarity as a Structural Principle of International Human Rights Law

Abstract: This article argues that the principle of subsidiarity should be recognized as a structural principle of international human rights law primarily because of the way that it mediates between the universalizing aspirations of human rights and the fact of the diversity of human communities in the world. The idea of subsidiarity is deeply consonant with the substantive vision of human dignity and the universal common good that is expressed through human rights norms. Yet, at the same time it promotes respect for pluralism by emphasizing the freedom of more local communities to realize their own ends for themselves. Looking at the place of subsidiarity in international law generally, the article argues that subsidiarity is a more accurate and powerful way of understanding the relationship of human rights to international law and to the roles of states in the global community. Using the constitutional structure of the European Union as a starting point, the article presents subsidiarity as a conceptual alternative to classic notions of state sovereigny, which relativizes but does not eliminate the roles of nation states. The analysis shows that in many ways, subsidiarity is already immanent in the existing structures and doctrines of international human rights law, and provides a better explanation for a number of otherwise problematic features of international human rights law, such as the "margin of appreciation" and reservations to universal human rights treaties. Finally, the article defends the idea and use of the principle of subsidiarity against critiques that resist the legal pluralism that subsidiarity fosters and protects. It argues that philosophical, legal and political objections to pluralism in international human rights law are misdirected, and that an international legal system structured in accordance with subsidiarity can best combine the values of universality and diversity that respect for human rights requires.