Tracing Value Change in the International Legal Order

International law is constantly navigating the tension between preserving the status quo and adapting to new exigencies. But when and how do such adaptation processes give way to a more profound transformation, if not a crisis of international law? To address the question of how attacks on the international legal order are changing the value orientation of international law, this book brings together scholars of international law and international relations.By combining theoretical and methodological analyses with individual case studies, this book offers readers conceptualizations and tools to systematically examine value change and explore the drivers and mechanisms of these processes. These case studies scrutinize value change in the foundational norms of the post-1945 order and in norms representing the rise of the international legal order post-1990. They cover diverse issues: the prohibition of torture, the protection of women's rights, theprohibition of the use of force, the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, sustainability norms, and accountability for core international crimes. The challenges to each norm, the reactions by norm defenders, and the fate of each norm are also studied. Combined, the analyses show that while a fewnorms have remained surprisingly robust, several are changing, either in substance or in legal or social validity. The book concludes by integrating the conceptual and empirical insights from this interdisciplinary exchange to assess and explain the ambiguous nature of value change in international law beyond the extremes of mere progress or decline.

Heike Krieger holds the Chair for International and Public Law at the Freie Universität Berlin. She is Chair of the Berlin-Potsdam Research Group (KFG) “The International Rule of Law - Rise or Decline?” and was reviously a Max Planck Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg. Between 2007 and 2014 she also acted as a judge of the Constitutional Court of the State of Berlin. Herresearch focusses on general international law, international human rights law, and international humanitarian law. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law.Andrea Liese is Professor of International Relations at the University of Potsdam and a member of the Berlin-Potsdam Research Group (KFG) “The International Rule of Law - Rise or Decline?”. She has previously held research and teaching positions at the Humboldt University of Berlin, at Freie Universität Berlin, and at the University of Bremen, where she received her PhD. She was also a Visiting Fellow at the Social Science Research Center (WZB) and a John F.Kennedy Memorial Fellow at Harvard University. She graduated in political science, law, sociology, and German studies at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main.