International law

Author: Xin Chongyang Translated
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2004-03-01
Features: This book attempts to explore the transition from traditional international law to modern international law, as well as the structural characteristics of international law. During this structural transformation, developing countries, represented by China, played a significant role. The publication of this edition coincided with the end of the Cold War, and the subsequent international relations experienced intense turbulence surpassing that of the past decades. Of course, this turbulence has affected international law in various ways. Therefore, to reflect these changes in international law as much as possible, we revised and published the second and third editions in 2003 and 1997, respectively. However, to be honest, the second writing principle mentioned above—clarifying the direction of modern international law—has become increasingly difficult to grasp during this period. We have repeatedly discussed the impact of the intense turbulence in international relations since 1990 on the entire international law, but we have not reached any conclusions. As a result, these two editions did not undergo a comprehensive revision; only partial revisions were made, and some newly emerging legal phenomena were added for the purpose of teaching in universities. However, even with partial revisions, the overall structure and concept of the book may inevitably lag behind the times. Therefore, with the change of authors to Sakamoto Jiro and Kuma Kazuhiro, the fourth edition took a step toward a comprehensive revision of this book, but it is merely a step. To this end, in addition to Mr. Ishimoto Yasuo, the revision study group for the fourth edition invited several friends who are both passionate supporters and severe critics of the book, and we sincerely thank them for their valuable suggestions! As the step of the comprehensive revision of this book, we started from the hypothesis that whether nearly international legal phenomena can be summarized under the term "globalization." However, globalization is a polysemic concept that can be used in various contexts, and for international law, which is inherently based on global existence, studying the issue from this angle is not an easy task. Like previous editions, we conducted repeated discussions through study groups and the exchange of drafts, but a comprehensive revision of the book from the perspective of globalization may not be entirely successful. In this sense, the fourth edition is merely a step toward the comprehensive revision of this book. Compared to the third edition, the fourth edition has made only a few major changes in structure, such as treating "Treaty Law" as an independent chapter and moving "State Responsibility" from Part II to Part V, which were long-standing unresolved issues. However, regardless of whether the authors changed or remained the same, there have been many changes in structure and content, some of which have also altered the fundamental understanding of the issues. Originally, each chapter was the responsibility of its respective contributor, but to maintain consistency as a textbook, we conducted repeated discussions, and in the end, some authors sacrificed their views for the consistency of the book. Therefore, readers are advised to pay attention. When reading this book, please note the following points: Names of international organizations and other terms are used in abbreviated form, but the full name is used upon the first occurrence in each chapter; frequently mentioned treaties, cases, and United Nations resolutions are also used in abbreviated form, while their full names, along with the dates of adoption and entry into force, are listed in the index at the end of the book; places requiring further explanation are indicated in the text, such as (see Section 5.2); additionally, terms and concepts considered particularly important in the study of international law are highlighted in bold.