Two new edited volumes on Highest Courts and Self-Defence
In recent weeks two edited volumes Highest Courts and the Internationalisation of Law and Self-Defence as a Fundamental Principle have been published by the Hague Academic Press. Dr. Sam Muller, director of HiiL, served as a co-editor to both of these books. Both edited volumes are the result of sessions of the Hague Colloquium on the Fundamental Principles of Law.
The first book, Highest Courts and the Internationalisation of Law deals with the position of highest national courts in today's world of globalisation. Traditionally, the highest courts have the task of safeguarding the coherency of law within the territory of their jurisdiction. Being at the top of the hierarchy of courts in their country, there was no other authority above them. This picture is being thoroughly disturbed by the internationalisation of law, which has brought the domestic legal systems into close contact with each other and which has created hierarchies among the highest national courts.
Highest Courts and the Internationalisation of Law is an important tool for national judges and staff of international courts, civil servants at ministries of justice, and others studying or practicing law on the dividing line between the national and international level.
Besides Sam Muller, the other editor of Highest Courts and the Internationalisation of Law is Marc Loth, at the time of writing this book, he was Dean and professor of jurisprudence and legal theory at the Erasmus School of Law (Rotterdam), currently he is a member of the Dutch Hoge Raad (Supreme Court).
Muller, A.S. and Loth, M.A. (eds) (2009), Highest Courts and the Internationalisation of Law: Challenges and Changes, The Hague: Hague Academic Press
The second book, Self-Defence as a Fundamental Principle, explores the changing nature of the principle of self-defence, both in national and international law as a result of profound changes in a globalising society. In today's world, new forms of aggression, the concept of collective security and an increasing interaction between national and internal law necessitate a reassessment of the concept of self-defence. Both the Colloquium as well as this subsequent publication, make a valuable contribution to the development of the law by recognizing the sources of the principle of self-defence, and the theories underlying it, by following its path of evolution and by reassessing its current status. The essays it contains are accompanied by a remarkably full and useful bibliography and by documentary materials, many of which are difficult to obtain elsewhere.
Arthur Eyffinger, director of JUDICAP (a research centre and publishing house in the field of internationalism), Alan Stephens, director of research of Clemens Nathan Research Centre were co-editors of this publication, along with Dr. Sam Muller, director of HiiL.
Eyffinger, A., Stephens, A. and Muller, A.S. (eds) (2009), Self-Defence as a Fundamental Principle, The Hague: Hague Academic Press