Casey on Nationals Abroad

Out this month is Christopher A. Casey (University of California, Berkeley), Nationals Abroad: Globalization, Individual Rights, and the Making of Modern International Law with

Cambridge University Press. 

From the publisher: 

It is a fundamental term of the social contract that people trade allegiance

for protection. In the nineteenth century, as millions of people made their way around the world, they entangled the world in web of allegiance that had enormous political consequences. Nationality was increasingly difficult to define. Just who was a national in a world where millions lived well beyond the borders of their sovereign state? As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, jurists and policymakers began to think of ways to cut the web of obligation that had enabled world politics. They proposed to modernize international law to include subjects other than the state. Many of these experiments failed. But, by the mid-twentieth century, an international legal system predicated upon absolute universality and operated by intergovernmental organizations came to the fore. Under this system, individuals gradually became subjects of international law outside of their personal citizenship, culminating with the establishment of international courts of human rights after the Second World War.

 Praise for the book:

"Nationals Abroad is a wonderfully written, rich and innovative study which unearths and problematizes the histories of international business interests and the creation of the international human rights regime and chronicles the rise and decline of diplomatic protection in favor of individual independent claims before international tribunals." -Doreen Lustig

"The individual is the new centrepiece of international law, yet most studies are confined to her human rights against her own state. Bringing together international law, human rights law, international economic law, and legal history together, Christopher Casey goes further. And with his superb writing skills he provides us with a book that is not only needed and timely, but also fascinating to read." -Ralf Michaels

"A tour de force. Nationals Abroad makes an important contribution to the historical literature on the place of individuals in international law. Casey rediscovers the central place that nationality occupied in the making of modern international law. Elegantly and charmingly written, this book is a must read for anyone interested in legal history of the nineteenth-century Atlantic."- Peter J. Spiro

Further information is available here.

--posted by Mitra Sharafi