Abstract

AbstractAs part of the Cambridge Law Journal's centenary celebrations, this article reads two essays from the journal's 50th anniversary issue. The essays, by Cambridge professors Robert Jennings and Derek Bowett offer resources for the history of international law and its historiography. They shine a light on key debates on the law of the sea at a crucial moment of its development. A close reading of these essays also reveals starting points for new scrutiny of an “English” tradition of international law, including the place of the academy within the tradition, its blueprints for the future of international law and international legal order, and its relation to empire and capitalism.

Highlights

  • The present issue celebrates the centenary of the Cambridge Law Journal by looking back at some of the pivotal scholarship in its pages

  • I take up the invitation to read two essays on the law of the sea, both published in the 50th anniversary counterpart to this volume: that is, the jubilee issue of April 1972

  • My reading draws from these essays resources both for the history of international law and its historiography

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

The present issue celebrates the centenary of the Cambridge Law Journal by looking back at some of the pivotal scholarship in its pages. A former naval officer with experience at the UN Office of Legal Affairs during the negotiation of the 1958 Geneva Conventions on the Law of the Sea, had taken it as the topic of his 1967 Melland Schill lectures at Manchester University.[12] Jennings had published on the law of the sea, and had begun to explore it in the context of practice Amongst other roles, he acted as a legal advisor to Royal Dutch Shell; he makes multiple appearances in the records of meetings between the British Government and John Blair, head of Shell’s legal department, on matters relating to seabed resources.[13] the choice to centre the law of the sea in the jubilee issue assumes importance when juxtaposed to current histories of international ordering that look back at the period from post-war to the present. The two papers are as much (or less) about past developments as they are about future directions, of the law of the sea and of international law

First Reading: A Division of Labour
Second Reading
Third Reading
AN ENGLISH SCHOOL?
The Place of the School in the English Tradition
The View from Nowhere and Its Blind Spots
Blueprints for the Future
UNTIL THE NEXT JUBILEE
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