The ICC pre-trial chamber decision on jurisdiction over the situation in Myanmar

The transfer and deportation of ethnically Rohingya people from Myanmar into Bangladesh is a crime against humanity demanding an international response. What role, however, should the International Criminal Court (ICC) play? On 6 September 2018 an ICC Pre-Trial Chamber ruled that the Court has jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute such crimes as they are completed on the territory of a State party, Bangladesh. Myanmar is not a party to ICC Statute and has invoked the principle that treaties do not bind third parties without their consent. The case put in this commentary is that while the Pre-Trial Chamber’s approach to the law was arguable as an interpretation of the ICC Statute, it was unwise as a matter of policy. The argument is threefold. First, the Pre-Trial Chamber’s ruling is as a matter of legal method only the first-move in a process of norm-creation and persuasion. Second, it does not follow that because territorial jurisdiction in international law includes ‘objective’ jurisdiction over transboundary acts completed on a State’s territory that such jurisdiction was delegated by member States to the ICC in all cases. Finally, it is argued that international criminal tribunals do not succeed when the cooperation of necessary territorial governments (here, Myanmar) is withheld. Proceeding in this case risks becoming a quagmire of the ICC’s own creation at a time when it can little afford further risks to its legitimacy.     

关于中国早期国家的几个问题

目前学术界对有关中国早期国家的概念存在着分歧.我们认为中国早期国家是指夏商周三代已具备公共权力,但社会仍滞留在居民血缘组织基础之上的政治组织.所谓中国在龙山时代就已出现了早期国家的说法是不能成立的.至于中国早期国家的产生,则是走的部落联盟酋长因其职务的“独立化“转变为“社会主人“这样一条路径.     

HISTORY AS PHILOSOPHY

Historians have taken a beating in recent times from an array of critics troubled by our persistent unwillingness to properly theorize our work. This essay contends that their criticisms have generally failed to make headway among mainstream historians owing to a little noticed cognitive byproduct of our work that I call history as philosophy. In so doing I offer a novel defense of professional history as it has been understood and practiced in the Anglophone world over the last half‐century or so while suggesting, in conclusion, that historians could not do other than they do without serious psychic and societal loss.     

The Science of Empire: Darwinism,Human Diversity,and Russian Physical Anthropology

Summary : The article explores deployment of the Darwinian narrative of the “natural history of humanity” in Russian physical anthropology in the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. It traces two narratives developed by the leading Russian school of physical anthropology: one narrative advanced a universalist vision of collective scholarly enterprise working toward clarifying the missing links in the a priori accepted developmental evolutionary model. The other constructed a new language that undermined the idea of species/subspecies/races/nations/ as stable, externally bounded, and internally homogeneous units and attempted to rationalize imperial hybridity. The article's main focus is on the latter classificatory narrative, its relational methodology, and the protostructuralist units of comparison that it produced.     

International law and ‘humanity’ in the making and unmaking of European solidarity, 1830–1915

Abstract

The Janus-faced character of nineteenth-century Europe presents unique challenges to historians. Concurrent to spiralling industrial growth, working-class revolts, transatlantic migration and imperialism, the stark social and economic upheaval of the period has virtually belied the solidarity achieved on the Continent. In recent years, however, a number of superlative scholarly studies have excavated and illuminated the intellectual, legal and technological revolutions that ushered in an era of promise and potential unity. In this article, the author examines the degree of interdependence and interconnectedness across the Continent and the world by melding extant scholarship, introducing primary-source research, and offering new perspectives on the relationship of the increasingly globalized world and the European efforts to harness its potential by attempting to create lasting norms for peace and prosperity through international law and the benchmark concept of ‘humanity’.     

时间连接成分的历时演变和产生方式

时间连接成分反映了篇章中相关事件的时间先后关系,是篇章组织中时间顺序义的显性表达法。本文从历时的角度考察了时间连接成分产生和发展的轨迹,归纳出时间连接成分产生的六种方式,同时对时间连接成分的隐喻基础作了简单的探讨。     

论贾谊的帝王之术

先秦诸子的道德之论,也就是帝王之术,同归于执本秉要,清虚自守。贾谊进一步阐明了这个观点,认为“道”是人君取得成功的最高政治法则,并且认为“道”的内容就是“善”。而贾谊道德论的实质是以“有为”为“无为”。为适应汉王朝大一统的政治需要,贾谊提出以“有为”的方法治理国家,实现老子提出的天下有道时无为而无不为的理想政治状态。     

资源,神权与文明的兴衰

根据当代流行的马克思主义考古学分析观念,上层建筑和经济基础都会对复杂社会的演进或衰亡起重要的作用。本文尝试从资源和神权这两个概念来探讨早期文明兴衰的动力,并讨论良渚文化消失和中国文明演进地域差异的原因。     

Ancient and Non-Western International Thought

Summary

In early and prehistoric times, human groups cooperated among themselves and competed viciously with other groups. Concepts of international relations, notably universal hegemony and exclusive nationalism, go back to the earliest recorded history. Only the ancient Greeks experienced inter-state relations somewhat analogous to those of modern Europe; and the first reflections on these may be found in Thucydides. The Greeks, and later the Romans, above all Cicero, developed a notion of cosmopolitanism. During the Latin Middle Ages, the papacy perpetuated the idea of universal hegemony. The principle of state sovereignty was also formulated. The pre-modern Chinese empire was held to rule ‘all-under-Heaven’; Confucian ethics contributes the notion of humanity (ren) as the fundamental category. Muslims deepened the us–them distinction by claiming sole legitimacy for their religious community under the Caliph (Deputy of Muhammad). Today, Muslims veer between this and a more Western approach to international relations.     

城市居住空间分异的理论基础与研究层次

本系统总结国外城市社会地理学自60年代以来的发展,作认为激进马克思主义流派的社会空间统一体理论应当是城市居住空间分异研究的理论基础。该理论认为城市地域内人地关系一一人类与他们生活的物质、社会环境的关系构成研究城市社会地理的基础。人(个体与群体)与周围的环境之间的双向互动(Interacting)的连续过程,就是社会空间统一体：一方面,人创造、调整城市空间,同时他们生活工作的空间又是他们存在的物质、社会基础。邻里、社区可改变、创造和保持定居的价值观、态度和行为;另一方面,价值观、态度和行为这些派生之物也不可避免地影响邻里和社区,而且连续的城市过程产生变化的城市空间,使经济、人口、社会和科技力量在不同水平上相互作用得以延续和发展。本系统介绍了社会空间统一体理论的发展沿革,然后指明城市居住空间研究的层次。