While digitalization has led to renewed attention to the principle of non-intervention, not the least by Western states rediscovering the protective dimension of sovereignty, it remains plagued by a certain vagueness. Attempts by academics to fill the gaps lead to starkly different results, ranging from the insertion of democratic values to the inadvertent reinforcement of protectionist tendencies. Overall, digitalization has so far had less of an effect on the principle of non-intervention than its renewed importance may have on the type of international law more generally.

This article seeks to make sense of two seemingly contradictory aspects of the General Assembly's practice: its history of recommending to States that they impose unilateral sanctions; and its series of resolutions denouncing unilateral coercive measures as illegal. It examines the seeming discrepancy between the customary international law position regarding unilateral sanctions, and the position asserted by the Assembly, and argues that on a nuanced reading of the Assembly's resolutions, these positions are not so divergent as is often supposed. The article concludes by examining the scope for the Assembly to make future sanctions recommendations, consistently with its prior condemnation of unilateral coercive measures.

The Monroe Doctrine was originally formulated as a US foreign policy principle, but in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it began to be redefined in relation to both the hemispheric policy of Pan-Americanism and the interventionist policies of the US in Central America and the Caribbean. Although historians and social scientists have devoted a great deal of attention to Latin American anti-imperialist ideologies, there was a distinct legal tradition within the broader Latin American anti-imperialist traditions especially concerned with the nature and application of the Monroe Doctrine, which has been overlooked by international law scholars and the scholarship focusing on Latin America. In recent years, a new revisionist body of research has emerged exploring the complicity between the history of modern international law and imperialism, as well as Third World perspectives on international law, but this scholarship has begun only recently to explore legal anti-imperialist contributions and their legacy. The purpose of this article is to trace the rise of this Latin American anti-imperialist legal tradition, assessing its legal critique of the Monroe Doctrine and its implications for current debates about US exceptionalism and elastic behaviour in international law and organizations, especially since 2001.

China's view on the sanctity of state sovereignty has slowly but inexorably been transformed, and the country has found it difficult to continue to adhere to the principles of non-interference and non-intervention with the same degree of rigour as during the Cold War era. This special section will explore what the principles mean to China today; why and how Beijing has become active in peacebuilding and conflict mediation; and what implication China's approach to the principles has for its position in the global liberal order. This article sets the scene by firstly demonstrating that defining the principles has always been a political act, and secondly offering new discussions about how China's expanding economic power forced the country to more actively engage in politics of conflict-affected regions. Finally, it offers a conceptual framework to explain why and how China has become increasingly active in peacebuilding and conflict mediation.

There is among Chinese international relations scholars an intense debate about how China can protect and promote Chinese global presence and interests while at the same time continue to adhere to the principle of non-intervention. New concepts, distinctions and approaches are developing as the debate progresses. The current Chinese foreign and security policy practice reflects a more flexible and pragmatic Chinese interpretation – and implementation – of the principle of non-intervention with different degrees and types of intervention. This article explores the search for “legitimate great power intervention” characterizing both the debate among Chinese international relations scholars and the current Chinese foreign and security policy practice, and uses this case as the departure point for a more general discussion of the drivers of change – and continuity – in Chinese foreign and security policy.

Scholars have paid considerable attention to the connection between Washington's withdrawal from intervention and the emergence of dictatorship in Central America during the 1930s. The current article seeks to enhance our understanding of those interconnected developments through the investigation of the US Foreign Service and its role in the early 1930s presidential campaigns in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. It shows that the dynamic interaction between actors in both Washington and Central America set in motion a process that would produce decades of authoritarian rule in the isthmus.

Temporary commissions of inquiry have become more prominent over the past decade, with their establishment particularly noticeable in the context of the Arab Spring. Along with their increased prominence they have also displayed certain features of an adjudicative nature. Although primarily established as fact-finding bodies, their mandates now regularly include making assessments as to potential violations by particular entities of international human rights law and international humanitarian law. This chapter examines the impact that commissions of inquiry as temporary creations have had upon international law and, more specifically, upon international legal adjudication, in particular the traditional formality of international legal adjudication, the principle prohibiting intervention in the internal affairs of states, and procedural fairness. While the temporariness of commissions of inquiry is in many ways unproblematic, this chapter identifies certain problems and examines the possibilities for the establishment of a permanent commission as a means to rectify some of the issues associated with their current temporary nature.

This article traces the place and development of diplomatic asylum in international law in close connection with the more specific questions raised by the case of Julian Assange, who was granted asylum in the Ecuador embassy in London on 16 August 2012. After discussing the historical rise and decline of diplomatic asylum, the article reviews the current status of diplomatic asylum in international law and its implications for the triangular legal relationship between the United Kingdom, Ecuador, and Mr Assange. The article submits that, although there would not seem to be a title in general international law or human rights law for Ecuador to grant asylum to Assange, there is no obvious legal route for the United Kingdom to terminate the asylum. The fate of Assange resembles that of a long series of historical precedents where diplomatic asylum resulted in protracted stays. Although this may seem an unsatisfactory result from the perspective of international law, the uneasy balance between territorial sovereignty and diplomatic inviolability also engenders incentives to avoid disputes or to resolve them through diplomatic channels.

A quarter-century ago in the Nicaragua judgment, the International Court of Justice insisted that to disallow a state's adherence to any particular governmental doctrine ‘would make nonsense of the fundamental principle of State sovereignty, on which the whole of international law rests, and the freedom of choice of the political, social, economic and cultural system of a State’ (para 263). The Court invoked the 1970 Friendly Relations Declaration and related documents that ‘envisage the relations among States having different political, economic and social systems on the basis of coexistence among their various ideologies’ (para 264). Although the continued relevance of this model of sovereign equality has since been called into question – above all, in the name of human rights, international criminal justice, and the ‘responsibility to protect’ – no systematic replacement has emerged. Notwithstanding some modification and erosion, the sovereign equality principle continues to have significant (and worthy) implications for legal relations between liberal and non-liberal states.

Recently, historians of the international system have called into question the significance of the Treaties of Westphalia in 1648 as the moment when the international system formed. One of their primary arguments is that the non-intervention norm typically associated with Westphalian notions of sovereignty developed much later. This paper will examine the early 17th-century debates over the right of the Pope to depose monarchs in the defense of spiritual matters. I read Part III and Part IV of Hobbes’ Leviathan in its intellectual context to see how his theory of sovereignty was partially developed to support a theory of non-intervention. This reading leads to two important contributions to current political science debates. First, it refutes the growing consensus that non-intervention developed as an aspect of sovereignty only in the late 18th and early 19th century. Second, the paper addresses current attempts to assert a right of humanitarian intervention. By exploring similarities between these recent debates and those between Bellarmine and Hobbes in the 17th century, I offer a fresh perspective on what is at stake in current claims to international community.

This article focuses on the analysis by the International Court of Justice of the principle of non-intervention in domestic affairs in its judgment of 27 June 1986 in the case concerning Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua and contrasts it with the evolution of international law and practice in this field. It is proposed that the Court's 1986 analysis not only remains of actuality today, but also constitutes a precursor to legal developments that have since taken place. This is particularly the case with regard to the relationship between the protection of human rights on the one hand and the safeguard of state sovereignty and the collective security regime on the other. The 1986 judgment helped to clarify the content of humanitarian assistance. It constituted the starting point for the development of this concept in a series of GA resolutions that were subsequently adopted. The controversial doctrine of ‘humanitarian intervention’, as well as state practice in violation of this principle, in no way led to modifying existing international law. Similarly, the new concept of ‘responsibility to protect’, which places emphasis on collective security and discounts unilateral action, has not led to the disappearance of the principle of non-intervention either.