Legal Networks of Empire in the Americas: International law and Imperialism in the Origins of the inter-American System

JUAN PABLO SCARFI

Bogotá

Conferencia; Repensando y renovando el estudio del derecho internacional desde América Latina; 2017

Universidad de Externado

This paper summarizes the main arguments of my recent book, The Hidden History of International Law in the Americas: Empire and Legal Networks (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). As such, it examines the intellectual history of a distinctive idea of American international law in the Americas, focusing principally on the evolution of the Aerican Institute of International Law (AIIL). The paper focuses on the debates sparked by the AIIL over American international law, intervention and non-intervention, the codification of public and private international law and the nature and scope of the Monroe Doctrine, as well as the international legal thought of Scott, Alvarez, and some other jurists, diplomats, and politicians from the Americas, such as Antonio Sánchez de Bustamante y Sirvén (Cuba), Elihu Root (United States), Víctor Maúrtua (Peru) and Carlos Saavedra Lamas (Argentina). The paper argues that American international law, as advanced primarily by the AIIL, was driven by a U.S.-led imperial aspiration of civilizing Latin America through the promotion of the international rule of law.