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This chapter begins with a brief history of the idea of succession, laying out the changing shape of legal discourse in the period prior to the project of codification in the 1960s. It then examines several features of the discourse as it developed during that time to identify the main theoretical, conceptual, and analytical ‘moves’ that have assisted in the formation of this particular field of international law, with a view to bringing to the forefront some of the quandaries that have tended to be ill-articulated in mainstream accounts. Some of the general ‘themes’ that appear to underpin approaches to the question of succession are discussed such as the differentiation between ‘de iure’ and ‘de facto’ succession and between ‘state continuity’ and ‘state succession’.

Territory is crucial in determining the sovereignty of a state. As Oppenheim has noted, ‘a State without a territory is not possible’. This does not mean territoriality is the single criterion of personality in international law; however statehood without a reasonably defined geographical base is inconceivable. This introductory part examines the long historical evolution of the international law of territory. It examines the concept of territorial acquisition such as conquest, cession, secession and terra nullius. The introduction also gives an overview of the role of territory in the sovereignty of a particular state. Discussion also focuses on territorial exclusivity and territorial sovereignty of a state wherein the boundaries, the jurisdiction and the right to self-determination of the state are examined. Further discussion also focuses on other existing issues regarding the extent of territory.

The EU has been a forceful critic of US extra-territoriality in the past, yet today it is itself engaging in a practice of territorial extension. This Chapter, discusses the phenomenon of territorial extension as a challenge for the concept of territorial sovereignty. The concept seems familiar as it rests upon territorial jurisdiction and upon the existence of a territorial nexus as for the adoption of regulation by a state but it is novel in that it also seeks to extend the regulatory perimeter. For powerful states and non-state polities with large markets, there is a danger that territorial extension will encourage them to seek to ‘rule the world’. Using the example of the EU’s Aviation Directive, this Chapter argues that the practice of territorial extension can only be evaluated on a case-by-case basis having regard to the specific context and characteristics of the measure at hand.

This chapter begins by surveying the literature on territorial conflict in international relations. It argues that the key term territory remains largely unexamined in this literature. This extends into a critique of dominant conceptions of territorial sovereignty. The chapter then explores techniques of producing territory and sovereignty in colonial India, showing how the anticolonial territorial imaginary produces a deeply fissured national body. The next section offers a theoretical reconstruction of foreign policy as a territorializing practice. The final section shows how territorializing gender helped to produce boundaries around the postcolonial Indian nation through the figure of the “abducted woman.”

This chapter explores both the alternate versions of spatial organization and power that persisted and evolved in the borderlands and how the nation-states managed to suppress them in the first four decades of the border's existence. In order to establish military authority and make the boundary line a meaningful marker of territorial sovereignty, the Mexican and U.S. militaries had to defeat two very different threats—the first from filibusters from outside the region and the second from Apache people who had long lived in the borderlands. While both of these struggles revealed how far the United States and Mexico still had to go before they could claim to fully control the borderlands, they also provided evidence of the subtle ways in which the boundary line had already begun to change the landscape of power in the region.

This chapter examines the role of the ICJ in territorial issues. The Court has clarified the principles surrounding the concept of territorial sovereignty; formulated an approach to pre-colonial and colonial title that has sought to maintain territorial stability; and set the stage for the rise of the legal right to self-determination, while demarcating some of its parameters. It has analysed the relationship between legal title, as exemplified in boundary treaties, and state practice in a persuasive manner, even if some rough edges are still apparent. It has sought to sustain an effective framework buttressed upon the principle of stability of territorial arrangements as far as possible.

This chapter examines sovereignty as a set of social relations explored through the case of the Sahrawi refugee camps. Full territorial sovereignty as desired by the refugees is absent in this setting; nevertheless, the various governance activities suggest that the social relations of sovereignty are very much present in the Sahrawi refugee camps. The chapter then addresses what kinds of ethnographic forms these social relations of sovereignty take in exile. The claimed territory of Western Sahara is an essential feature of Sahrawis' aspirations for full sovereignty in the future; the Polisario Front currently controls part of this claimed territory. In the context of Sahrawis' exile, the claimed territory either is not readily accessible for refugees on a daily basis due to distance, or is under Moroccan annexation. As a result, the chapter explores how, in exile, the social relations of sovereignty take the form of relations between people — governing authorities and governed constituencies — with these relations playing out with regard to resources that, due to displacement, take nonterritorial, mobile forms such as rations and refugees' labor.

This chapter explores international legal discourse on legal personality, particularly the dialectic between territorial sovereignty and the right of peoples to self-determination. These clashes reproduce the very basic conflict between the classical and the romantic concepts of meaning outlined by Bartelson. Indeed, the phenomenology of subjective, individual meaning, which is opened up by the language of self-determination, begins to provide a way into a phenomenology of international relations. At the same time, it is recognised that the language of the state, as the mechanism for identifying legally significant customary law practice, still produces a circular reaffirmation of territorial integrity and precludes change. Indeed, the concern of the positive, international legal system with order means, historically, that it has no legal theory of personality, but merely addresses tasks to entities which precede it. There follows a doctrinal study of the implications of the classical and romantic interpretations of personality for the state and nation as competing subjects of international law, to show the impasse between the two paradigms of personality, which have yet to be superseded.

This chapter reviews China's broad security interests in the South China Sea (SCS). It covers concerns over territorial sovereignty and maritime jurisdiction and growing appeal for overall strategic stability, homeland security, and sea routes safety. It also contends that China seeks to create and maintain a stable regional security order that is conducive to managing disputes and build cooperation to better deal with non-traditional maritime security threats. The chapter analyses China's official statements, which reveals that China's perceptions of its security interests in the SCS are multi-faceted. It explains how issues on territorial sovereignty and maritime rights always possess a domestic sensitivity, the mishandling of which might lead to political and social instability, which triggers the security concerns of the country.

The impacts of climate change challenge traditional notions in international law, most notably those relating to the principle of territorial sovereignty, with its presumption of defined territory and fixed maritime boundaries, and State responsibility with its presumption of liability and an obligation to make reparation. Furthermore, efforts to curb climate change have given rise — sometimes in conjunction with developments in other environmental regimes — to the evolution of some new principles and concepts of international law, including the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, the notion of common concern of humankind, protection of vulnerable countries, and so-called flexibility mechanisms for industrial countries to implement their commitments under the Climate Change Convention. This chapter addresses a number of those challenges to international law. First, it reviews the principal international legal instruments adopted in response to climate change. Secondly, it examines the challenges of climate change to territorial sovereignty and Statehood, and, thirdly, to the maritime boundaries of coastal and island States. Fourthly, the relationship between climate change and human rights is reviewed. Fifthly, the chapter discusses whether the current rules of the international law of State responsibility represent the proper paradigm to address the problem of damage caused by climate change. Lastly, some final observations are made.

This chapter examines Islamic law states’ decisions to use international conflict management venues in the context of territorial disputes (1945–2012). The dissonance between Islamic law and international law is particularly apparent in the context of territorial claims, because Islamic notions of land ownership and territorial sovereignty are religious in nature. Not all ILS approach international conflict management in the same way. Secular—or rather shared—legal features, such as the presence of a secular court system and constitutional mentions of peaceful resolution of disputes, have the power to attract such ILS to legal approaches—arbitration and adjudication. In contrast, mediation and conciliation are most appealing to those ILS whose legal systems are deeply infused with traditional Islamic precepts. Such states are morally committed to these procedures. In an important way, there is a synergy between norms of traditional Islamic dispute resolution and international non-binding third-party mechanisms.

This chapter analyzes how the articulation of corporate sovereignty to capitalist value enabled corporations to transact business and enter into legal proceedings in multiple jurisdictions. It describes the coalescence of the pockmarked international regulatory structure for transnational corporations that emerged during the mid-20th century, and considers the ways legal frameworks of personhood were applied to corporations extraterritorially. The chapter also investigates the regulation of foreign corporations that emerged within the complex of territorial sovereignty, and examines the conflict of laws that concern trade disputes, nationalization of foreign corporate assets, and liabilities of corporations under public international law.

This chapter explores the writings of prominent scholars of liberal theory and Indigenous peoples - Moore, Ivison, Schouls (among others) - to highlight some of the conceptual challenges policymakers and jurists face in attempting to accommodate tribal rights to self-government within the liberal state. This study suggests that liberalism is capable of embracing the interests of tribal governments and their claims to self-determination while attending to the normative demands of the liberal state for protection of individual rights and interests.

As recent trends indicate, China's development into a global power is occurring in conjunction with the development of its neighboring countries. In many ways, its growth can benefit them by creating an East Asian economic cooperation system. China's growth will surely contribute to the development of and peace in East Asia and a new period of prosperity. This will be in stark contrast to the history of expansion and military conquest, wars, confrontation, and blood that marked the rise of Western powers and Japan in world history. Developing together with its neighbor states is one of China's fundamental strategies.

Renewed Great Power interest in the Mediterranean in the 1910s did more than shake up international relations; it forced the French to change domesticpolicies in Tunisia. Tunisians responded to Italy’s invasion of Libya in 1911 and France’s establishment of a protectorate over Morocco in 1912 with new forms of jurisdictional maneuvering, leading French officials to invent a new doctrine of “co-sovereignty,” whereby Tunisian territory would be at once Tunisian and French. In so doing, however, they helped foster new forms of opposition, first from their imperial rivals and then from a burgeoning Tunisian nationalist movement. The chapter concludes with Britain taking France to The Hague Tribunal over Tunisian conflicts in 1923, Italy trading its cooperation in Tunisia for French acquiescence upon its invasion of Ethiopia, and the birth of the Destour nationalist party.

This chapter uses trauma theory drawn from the psychology literature to show that the transformative historical event of colonialism in India and China can be classified as collective trauma. It lays out the theoretical foundations of PII and shows how it is an essential component of both India's and China's national identity and international outlook.

This chapter argues that Indian and Pakistani constructions of territorial sovereignty on the plains, heavily dependent on their positioning upstream or downstream, differed in the context of Kashmir. Several Indus Basin rivers flow through Kashmir before entering Pakistan. Dominating Kashmir therefore means having early access to river water, and the ability to construct water-control projects such as Pakistan’s Mangla Dam. One reason why India-Pakistan water relationships remain controversial is that the Indus Waters Treaty, representing a very narrow settlement of the water dispute, did not address the geopolitical challenges that Kashmir posed. The chapter therefore shows that competing Indian and Pakistani articulations of the link between water control and territorial sovereignty became even stronger in the context of the Kashmir dispute.

Chapter three makes use of previously unused archival documents to look at the 1960 border negotiations between India and China, the last of such negotiations between the two countries before they went to war in 1962. The chapter outlines how the interaction of the three goals of PII led to the failure of the negotiations and, consequently, a border war that still affects relations between the two countries five decades later. It also shows that PII had already emerged as a recognizable and coherent belief system in these two countries in the years just after decolonization.

This chapter examines the contemporary manifestations of rightlessness by discussing the precarious legal personhood of asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants. The human rights framework represents a shift from citizenship to personhood as the basis of entitlement to rights. To assess the significance and limits of this shift, the chapter turns to Arendt’s unique understanding of personhood as persona, which denotes an artificial mask that enables public appearance and allows one’s voice to sound through. Although personhood can no longer be officially taken away, it can be significantly undermined as a result of border control practices justified on the basis of territorial sovereignty. To make this point, the chapter analyzes two cases from the European Court of Human Rights: N. v. UK (2008) and Saadi v. UK (2008). These cases highlight that “the human person” at the heart of human rights law is subjected to various forms of stratification in the context of deportation and immigration detention. However, this argument does not lead to the conclusion that personhood is a legal mechanism that necessarily engenders violent exclusion—a point made by several critical legal scholars. From an Arendtian perspective, human beings can become equals only through artificial conventions such as personhood.