The League of Nations as an international organisation
Research output: Contributions to collected editions/works › Chapter › peer-review
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The Cambridge History of International Law: Volume X: International Law at the Time of the League of Nations (1920-1945). ed. / Randall Lesaffer; Robert Kolb; Momchil Milanov. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025. p. 100-129 (The Cambridge History of International Law; Vol. 10).
Research output: Contributions to collected editions/works › Chapter › peer-review
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TY - CHAP
T1 - The League of Nations as an international organisation
AU - Burton, Philip
AU - Tams, Christian J.
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © Cambridge University Press & Assessment 2025.
PY - 2025/5
Y1 - 2025/5
N2 - The League of Nations was the first permanent international organisation with a general mandate. Its establishment is widely regarded as having had a significant, if elusive, impact upon international law, which became centred on international institutions. These three aspects of the League – its permanence, the generality of its mandate, and the ’institutional turn’ it brought to international law – lie at the heart of the assumed significance of the League for contemporary international lawyers. They are regarded as the League’s principal innovations and central components of its legacy, often without much interrogation and rarely subject to sustained analysis. This chapter offers analysis and interrogation to nuance claims about the League’s innovations. It presents the League as an institution whose grand designs often failed, but which innovated quietly and gradually. Above all, it shifts the focus away from the perceived ’breakthrough’ of 1919, and highlights the evolutionary nature of the League, which adapted throughout its life.
AB - The League of Nations was the first permanent international organisation with a general mandate. Its establishment is widely regarded as having had a significant, if elusive, impact upon international law, which became centred on international institutions. These three aspects of the League – its permanence, the generality of its mandate, and the ’institutional turn’ it brought to international law – lie at the heart of the assumed significance of the League for contemporary international lawyers. They are regarded as the League’s principal innovations and central components of its legacy, often without much interrogation and rarely subject to sustained analysis. This chapter offers analysis and interrogation to nuance claims about the League’s innovations. It presents the League as an institution whose grand designs often failed, but which innovated quietly and gradually. Above all, it shifts the focus away from the perceived ’breakthrough’ of 1919, and highlights the evolutionary nature of the League, which adapted throughout its life.
KW - League of Nations
KW - Sir Eric Drummond
KW - institutional law
KW - institutions
KW - international organisation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=105014311274&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/9781108633963.006
DO - 10.1017/9781108633963.006
M3 - Chapter
SN - 978-1-108-49923-1
T3 - The Cambridge History of International Law
SP - 100
EP - 129
BT - The Cambridge History of International Law
A2 - Lesaffer, Randall
A2 - Kolb, Robert
A2 - Milanov, Momchil
PB - Cambridge University Press
CY - Cambridge
ER -