Land Feuds and Their Solutions: Finding International Law Beyond the Tribunal Chamber

摘要: The resolution of conflicting claims to land has long stood at the heart project international law. Indeed, encounter between order envisaged by advocates law nations and what Georges Scelle called “obsession with territory” been a defining struggle for our field, demonstrating some its promise others futility. Much, perhaps even most, legal scholarship on this subject over last century focused adjudication ad hoc tribunals or standing courts, in which jurists have derived invoked hallowed principles that enabled them draw lines—across mountains, deserts, rivers, human settlements—where mere politicians had never succeeded. doctrines territorial sovereignty emanating from these decisions suggested bright future Yet more pessimistic appraisal would see darker image, one characterized war—interstate, colonial, civil—and settlement whose lines reflected power politics, but surely not norms. Adjudications could be viewed as sideshow addressing small-scale conflicts, results dictated desire appease both parties than reasoning toward principled solution.