Showing posts with label research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label research. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Legal History Survival Guide, pt 2: helpful sources for getting started on law and foreign relations history

In the Legal History Survival Guide at the end of my draft on Legal History as Diplomatic History, I'm listing sources with especially good bibliographies, bibliographic essays, sources cited in footnotes, etc.  Here's my current list:

Works with helpful bibliographies and bibliographic essays:
  • Lauren Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)
  • Martti Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law, 1870-1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
  • Paul Gordon Lauren, The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003)
  • Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010)
  • Stephen C. Neff, Justice Among Nations: A History of International Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014)
  • A.W. Brian Simpson, Human Rights and the End of Empire: Britain and the Genesis of the European Convention (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)
Works with extensive and helpful citations in the notes:
  • George Athan Billias, American Constitutionalism Heard Round the World, 1776-1989: A Global Perspective (New York: New York University Press, 2009)
  • Stephen M. Griffin, Long Wars and the Constitution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013)
  • Mariah Zeisberg, War Powers: The Politics of Constitutional Authority (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013)
Helpful reference sources:
  •  David L. Sloss, Michael D. Ramsey, and William S. Dodge, eds., International Law in the U.S. Supreme Court: Continuity and Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2011)
  • David P. Forsythe, ed., Encyclopedia of Human Rights, 5 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009)
Excellent overview of Foreign Relations Law:
  • Curtis A. Bradley, International Law in the U.S. Legal System (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013)
The best source for access to legal documents relating to law and diplomatic history:

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Crowdsourcing cite on the History of Foreign Relations Law as Administrative Law

In the essay I'm writing about legal history as diplomatic history, I have this short passage noting that a lot of the law pertaining to U.S. international affairs consists of federal regulations. Title 10 of the U.S. Code pertaining to the armed forces is just one aspect. But foreign relations law sources (at least that I've checked so far) don't cover administrative law, and my research is not turning up helpful works.  So I thought I should crowdsource my cites for this. Since my goal is to cite to sources that graduate students and other non-legal historians can start with in an effort to bring legal history into their work, can you recommend helpful works?  Here's the paragraph:
Battles over the Treaty of Versailles and the National Security Act of 1947 do more than showcase the way American political leaders fought over the direction of U.S. foreign policy. Statutes and treaties become the legal architecture of statebuilding. The National Security Act did more than ratify a vision of American national security.  It restructured the military and created new departments.  The resulting Department of Defense has grown to a sprawling bureaucracy with over 3.2 million employees, and drawing approximately 19% of the federal budget, though this number does not include veterans benefits. Although the statute itself, and subsequent amendments, create the basic organization of federal bureaucratic power, it also lays the basis for new forms of lawmaking. Much of the law of U.S. foreign relations since 1947 is administrative law generated by federal rulemaking. Because of this, the legal history of American foreign relations is not limited to treaties, statutes and court rulings. Administrative law is foreign relations law. Diving into this regulatory history would illuminate the legal side of the bureaucratic history of foreign relations.
Please post your ideas in the comments or email me. My readers will thank you!