History

• The earliest treatises on public international law were written by Islamic jurists around 1,200 years ago and concerned the law of war, diplomacy, treaties, and the administration of Islamic ethics. As the modern centralized nation-state began developing in Europe in the 1600s, treaties between nations began to flourish. After the unenforceability of these treaties led to WWI, the League of Nations became the world's first attempt to develop a worldwide public international legal regime. Its failure led to WWII and the development of the United Nations, which now dominates the conduct of public international law.
  
  

Subject Matter

• Public international law assumes that sovereign nation-states are the primary actors in the public international legal regime. It covers diverse fields such as the definition of a nation-state (involving questions of statehood for areas such as Palestine, Kurdistan, and Taiwan), diplomacy, international human rights, arms control, war crimes, refugees, environmental concerns and international waters.
  
  

Basis of International Relations Law

• The most important source of international law is treaties. Custom, traditional jurisprudence, and decisions of international judicial bodies such as the World Court also play important roles. Significant disagreement exists among states regarding its interpretation (the disagreement between the United Kingdom and China, for example, over the validity of the 19th century treaty ceding Hong Kong to U.K. sovereignty).
  
  

Enforcement

• Enforcement of international relations law differs from enforcement of national and local law because there is no overall sovereign to enforce it. Although the United Nations asserts jurisdiction over much of this sphere, it can only operate on consensus. International law may be enforced unilaterally by a single nation-state, multilaterally by a group of nations (as in WWII), or by UN resolution (such as Gulf War I and the Korean War). Enforcement may involve military force, economic sanctions, international ostracism (refusal of diplomatic recognition, for example), or nonbinding resolutions.
  
  

Programs of Study

• The most prestigious undergraduate international relations programs include Georgetown, Tufts, Yale and Columbia; however, these programs generally lack the rigorous legal emphasis of more advanced programs. The University of Oslo (Norway) offers a traditional masters degree in Public International Law. Nearly every U.S. law school and many law schools abroad offer courses in public international law, but U.S. law schools generally do not offer concentrations in this field. Master of Laws programs for law school graduates, such as the one offered by Columbia University, often offer specializations in this field.