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International lawyers study international law primarily through its written texts—treaties, official documents, judgments, and scholarly works. Critical to being an international lawyer, it seems, is access to the written word, whether in hard copy or online. Indeed, as Jesse Hohmann observes, "the production of text can come to feel like the very purpose of international law."

AbstractThe language of democracy has become common in international law, the legal system that regulates relations between nation states. This interest in democracy has however largely ignored democracy at the international level and focused instead on national democratic standards. In this paper, I start by sketching the threadbare debates about democracy beyond political borders in international law and then turn to the way that international institutions have developed this concept, particularly in the peace and state‐building boom associated with the end of the Cold War. The two contexts for democracy have taken different directions. In the case of democracy at the international level, the discussion has become polarised between global North and South, with democracy being promoted by the South as an omnibus agenda to remedy economic and political inequalities. In the case of democracies within states, international lawyers have taken democracy to have a fixed form, associated with specific institutional practices and structures, limiting its capacity for transformation.

In memory of Thomas Franck International lawyers have been less interested in the concept of legitimacy than political scientists or international-relations scholars. Indeed, Thomas Franck lamented in 1987 that international lawyers positively avoided the topic. The traditional approach was for lawyers to use the notions of legality and legitimacy more or less interchangeably; a legal context was assumed to confer automatically some type of legitimacy on the outcome of deliberations. It is striking that critiques of the substance of international law, such as those from the developing world or those drawing on critical and feminist theories, do not usually resort to the language of legitimacy to emphasize international law's inadequacies. Rather, they typically propose the creation of more law to remedy the deficiencies of the international legal system. The North American Treaty Organization's (NATO's) bombing of Serbia and Kosovo in 1999 sparked an exploration of the differences between legality and legitimacy by international lawyers. The attack by NATO was certainly prima facie illegal: it was conducted without the endorsement of the United Nations (UN) Security Council and it was not an obvious use of the right to self-defense recognized in the UN Charter. Both scholars and politicians elaborated the idea of the legitimacy of the bombing � in the face of a humanitarian emergency caused by the Serbian government � to provide a contrast to what they saw as the morally inadequate or unattractive legal response.

Feminist scholarship in international law has generated debate between feminists, but little engagement from the disciplinary main-stream. This chapter addresses one strand of the internal debate, Janet Halley's argument that feminism has come to exercise considerable powerin international law and its institutions; and that it does so with little self-reflection, indeed denying its own influence by asserting an inauthentic under-dog status. After describing the place of feminist theorising in international law, and then Halley's critique, the chapter considers feminist scholarship and its oscillation between resistance to and compliance with international law in the context of state-building and democratisation. It argues that feminists have been successful in bringing the language of women?s empowerment into international law but less adept at identifying methods to give this language life on the ground

An intriguing episode in the life of the now-defunct United Nations (UN) Commission on Human Rights was its adoption of a series of resolutions on human rights and democracy. In 1999 the Commission adopted a resolution entitled �Promotion of the right to democracy� (CHR Res. 1999/57), in anticipation of the new century and millennium. The resolution endorsed a �right to democratic governance� as including a range of civil and political rights such as those to freedom of expression, thought and association. It also included the rights of �universal and equal suffrage,� free voting procedures, periodic and free elections and �the right of citizens to choose their governmental system through constitutional or other democratic means.� The resolution was introduced by the United States and co-sponsored by almost all 53 members of the Commission. Cuba moved an amendment to the draft to delete the words �the right to� from the title of the resolution, on the grounds that no such right existed, but this failed to garner majority support. In the end, the resolution was adopted without a negative vote, but with China and Cuba abstaining. This was the only occasion on which the Commission, the major UN forum for human rights development, endorsed a specific right to democracy. Later resolutions avoided this language and addressed the relationship between the concepts of human rights and democracy, which became a lightning rod for North�South tensions in the Commission. Some of the subsequent resolutions endorsed the process of democratization of states, focusing on democracy at the national level. They presented �free and fair elections [as] an essential feature of democracy� (e.g., CHR Res. 2001/41). These resolutions were typically supported by the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada as well as some developing states, while states such as China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Syria would abstain from voting.

This chapter explores the conceptual politics of democracy in the area of international law and the institutions in which it is developed, particularly the United Nations. How has the meaning of democracy been fought over and shaped in these con texts? The chapter first sketches the relationship of international law and concepts of democracy. It then examines the way that the United Nations has developed the idea of democracy. The chapter observes that, after a long period of detachment, inter national lawyers and international organisations have created a constrained, institution-based definition of democracy. This has produced an unstable foundation for democracy in cases of international intervention after conflict. International legal approaches to democracy provide a nice case study of some of the conceptual debates identified by the editors in their introduction to this volume. Various understandings of democracy jostle for space in the international arena, from those focused on elections, to those that give priority to the protection of human rights, to versions that focus on institution building. These understandings are theoretically rather muddled and do not fit easily within the standard typologies of democracy. International lawyers tend generally to opt for vagueness rather than precision in this area and avoid discussions of demo�cracy�s meaning and value. The most recent inter national accounts of democracy reject the idea of any type of democracy template and insist that local conditions must influence its design. How ever, the practice of the United Nations in pro�moting democracy after conflict suggests that local concerns and voices in fact occupy an uncertain and insecure place in this enterprise and that more attention is paid to process than to the final democratic product.

This paper examines the way that women's relationship to peace is constructed in international institutions and international law. It identifies a set of claims about women and peace that are typically made and considers these in light of women's experience in the conflicts in Bougainville, East Timor and the Solomon Islands.

This article is partly based on observation of the High Court deliberations on the Koowarta case in 1982 and partly on reflection on its significance in defining the relationship between the Australian legal system and international law. It also contrasts the broad approach of the majority to the external affairs power with its analysis of the races power. The article suggests that the intense legal debates about the proper spheres of international, national and state law contained in the judgments are reflected in political debates today.

This article is partly based on observation of the High Court deliberations on the Koowarta case in 1982 and partly on reflection on its significance in defining the relationship between the Australian legal system and international law. It also contrasts the broad approach of the majority to the external affairs power with its analysis of the races power. The article suggests that the intense legal debates about the proper spheres of international, national and state law contained in the judgments are reflected in political debates today.