International Law and Religion: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

This books maps out the territory of international law and religion challenging received traditions in fundamental aspects. On the one hand, the connection of international law and religion has been little explored. On the other, most of current research on international legal thought presents international law as the very victory of secularization. By questioning that narrative of secularization this book approaches these traditions from a new perspective.

From the Middle Ages’ early conceptualizations of rights and law to contemporary political theory, the chapters bring to life debates concerning the interaction of the meaning of the legal and the sacred. The contributors approach their chapters from an array of different backgrounds and perspectives but with the common objective of investigating the mutually shaping relationship of religion and law. The collaborative endeavour that this volume offers makes available substantial knowledge on the question of international law and religion.

Martti Koskenniemi, Academy Professor, , Monica Garcia-Salmones Rovira, Post-doc Fellow, , Paolo Amorosa, Doctoral Candidate,

Martti Koskenniemi is Academy Professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki and Director of the Erik Castren Institute of International Law and Human Rights. He was a member of the Finnish diplomatic service in 1978-1994 and of the International Law Commission (UN) in 2002-2006. He has held visiting professorships in, among other places, New York University, Columbia University, University of Cambridge, London School of Economics, and Universities of Brussels, Melbourne, Paris, Sao Paulo and Utrecht. He is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and has a doctorate h.c. from the Universities of Uppsala, Frankfurt and McGill.

Monica Garcia-Salmones is adjunct Professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki and a Post-doctoral Fellow at the research project History of International Law: between Religion and Empire. She has published a monograph on the history of international legal positivism. More recently her research has focused in the early history of international law, with a focus in the study of the conceptual, philosophical and historical continuities between the moderns and previous theological theories

Paolo Amorosa is a doctoral candidate and a member of the research project ’Intellectual History of International Law: Religion and Empire’ at the Erik Castren Institute of International Law and Human Rights, University of Helsinki. Prior to that, he has been teaching international law and human rights at Tallinn Law School, Tallinn University of Technology. He received his LLM degree in Public International Law from Leiden University and worked as a research assistant at the Grotius Center for International Legal Studies and at the Italian Embassy to the Holy See. His recent work has focused on international legal thought in the United States in the early 20th century.