The hidden history of international law in the Americas

Empire and legal networks

Bibliographic Data

ID9910135
AuthorsTom Long (0000-0002-5864-2941, University of Warwick, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume94
Issue1
Pages228-229
Publication date2018-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-5850 • E-ISSN: 1468-2346
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ia/iix261
OpenAlexW2781674598
LanguageEN
Citations received21

In the records of United States–Latin American diplomacy, the centuries-old Monroe Doctrine and Platt Amendment remain powerful symbols of the US's high-handed, unilateral and interventionist tendencies—as well as of its propensity to justify those actions with lofty rhetoric. When US Secretary of State John Kerry declared in 2013 that ‘the era of the Monroe Doctrine is over’, his audience at the Organization of American States understood his point—whether or not they were inclined to believe him. In a remarkable and thoughtful book, Juan Pablo Scarfi examines what he calls the ‘hidden history’ of international law in the Americas in the early twentieth century. International law was a field where power was exercised and contested. Although, the US's meteoric international rise was marked by armed interventions and gunboat diplomacy in the circum-Caribbean, it also used international law to ‘support and legitimize imperial and missionary projects’. Scarfi's account—which combines international and intellectual history—focuses on the ideas, careers and interactions of several prominent international lawyers and diplomats, as well as the institution that brought them together. The American Institute of International Law (AIIL) emerged from the initiative of Elihu Root and James Scott, but it thrived in great part thanks to backing from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Perhaps due to the contrast between the AIIL and military interventions, the institute enjoyed Latin American support for much of its history. While Scarfi sees the AIIL as hampered by US-centrism, calling it a ‘Pan American legal network of hegemonic interactions, a US-led space’ (p. 47), it laid the groundwork for increasing Latin American contestation in the legal sphere

Diplomacy · Doctrine · International law · International relations · Latin Americans · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · State (computer science · International Labor and Employment Law · International Law and Aviation · International Law and Human Rights · Law

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