The Hidden History of International Law in the Americas

by Dr. Juan Pablo Scarfi

2017 · Oxford University Press

International law has played a crucial role in the construction of imperial projects. Yet within the growing field of studies about the history of international law and empire, scholars have seldom considered this complicit relationship in the Americas. The Hidden History of International Law in the Americas offers the first exploration of the deployment of international law for the legitimization of U.S. ascendancy as an informal empire in Latin America. This book explores the intellectual history of a distinctive idea of American international law in the Americas, focusing principally on the evolution of the American Institute of International Law (AIIL). This organization was created by U.S. and Chilean jurists James Brown Scott and Alejandro Alvarez in Washington D.C. for the construction, development, and codification of international law across the Americas. Juan Pablo Scarfi examines the debates sparked by the AIIL over American international law, intervention and non-intervention, Pan-Americanism, 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 a number of jurists, diplomats, politicians, and intellectuals from the Americas. Professor Scarfi 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. By providing a convincing critical account of the legal and historical foundations of the Inter-American System, this book will stimulate debate among international lawyers, IR scholars, political scientists, and intellectual historians.

Building a Nation

by Juan Carlos Mercado

1996 · Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

This book is the only one of its kind on the market. It deals with one of the most brilliant yet least known Latin American authors, Esteban EcheverrÌa. EcheverrÌa was the author of La Cautiva (The Captive), El Matadero (The Slaughterhouse), and Dogma Socialista (Socialist Dogma) which formed the base of the constitution of the Republic of Argentina. In Building A Nation, Juan Carlos Mercado recovers the figure of EcheverrÌa through an analysis centralized in his work as a poet, thinker, and politician--all as one unit. The study takes into account the many sources, including European ones, that EcheverrÌa used in order to formulate a literary and political national project. Readers of this work will acquire a thorough understanding of the significance of EcheverrÌa's influence--from the introduction of European Romanticism into Argentine Literature; to the initiation of a critical and realistic narrative style never yet seen before in Argentina; to the founding of a liberal-humanist tendency which went on to acquire definitive political shape for the country.