In the Middle Ages, however much people might have wished to pretend otherwise, law and legal processes could not and did not remain static. However, in the centuries between the establishment of the kingdom of Jerusalem and the other principalities in Latin Syria at the beginning of the twelfth century and the end of the Cypriot monarchy towards the end of the fifteenth, the juridical systems established by the first conquerors retained considerable elements of continuity despite the political changes in the East and the developments in legal thinking and the administration of justice in Western Europe. In the thirteenth century, the court procedure and the customary law of the kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus were the subjects of a series of legal treatises, and the fact that the Venetian authorities in Cyprus in the sixteenth century considered it worth their while to have several of them – those by John of Ibelin, Geoffrey le Tor, James of Ibelin and the anonymous authors of the Livre des Assises des Bourgeois and the Livres du Pledéant et du Plaidoyer – translated into Italian is testimony to their continuing usefulness.

This chapter examines how Ghanaian courts have historically constructed and sustained a rejectionist narrative toward Muslim Family Law (MFL). From the colonial Marriage of Mohammedans Ordinance of 1907 to the present, the judiciary and bureaucracy have collaborated to exclude MFL from formal recognition, treating it as a foreign legal system. This enduring narratival exclusion has denied Ghanaian Muslims meaningful judicial feedback, foreclosed harmonization between communal and state legal meanings, and deepened procedural injustice. The analysis traces how exclusion, presented as legal neutrality, in practice privileges customary law rooted in indigenous religion while marginalizing Islamic norms. Drawing on interviews and case analysis, the chapter shows how this exclusionary narrative erodes trust in courts, fosters legal estrangement, and, in extreme cases, fuels radicalization. By theorizing “narratival exclusion,” the chapter reveals how cohesive yet exclusionary judicial narratives produce stability without justice, undermining legitimacy in Ghana’s plural legal order.

The recent recognition of the Rights of Nature (RoN) in the legal sphere presents significant challenges in its implementation. In modern States, justice is predominantly a human domain, based on the assumption that only in this realm can objectivity supersede subjectivity, rationality override emotionality, and the social transcend the natural. Consequently, the recognition of the Rights of Nature has required judicial systems to strive to overcome anthropocentric perspectives in order to advance biocentric and ecocentric frameworks. However, a critical question arises: How can non-human entities be formally recognized as subjects of justice? What poses a challenge for Western justice systems seems to be inherent in Indigenous justice systems, where the spiritual, human, and natural realms are not compartmentalized. The nature-culture nexus has been integrated from the perspectives of communities that maintain direct relationships with and dependencies on land and water sources, highlighting the relevance of worldviews that transcend segmented anthropocentric perspectives. To shed light on these challenges, this chapter proposes a theoretical-methodological analysis grounded in political ontology and the biocultural approach, aiming to facilitate dialogue between State legal systems and Indigenous customary law. We argue that biocultural rights and the recognition of legal pluralism offer the advantage of recognizing the role of communities as interactive participants in their territories, presenting an alternative for the decolonization of the Rights of Nature.

This chapter explores the progress of international climate law since the 1972 Stockholm Conference. Climate change threatens the very kind of massive and irreversible harm to the environment that the conference sought to prevent. The chapter shows first that customary international law, while imposing harm prevention obligations on states, has not kept pace with the global, intertemporal, and developmental dimensions of climate change. The chapter then offers a brief account of the evolution of the global climate regime launched by the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. As the discussion will illustrate, 30 years later, the regime continues to wrestle with the complexities of the climate challenge, including difficult burden-sharing questions and the fraught relations between North and South. The 2015 Paris Agreement, which introduced a new approach to international climate governance, is a response to these complexities

While there were some aspects of Nuer ‘tradition’ or ‘culture’ that Messianics in Gambella proudly endorsed and celebrated as biblically authentic, others were rejected as ‘pagan’ or satanic. In this chapter, I turn to the relationship between Messianic Judaism and ‘Nuer customary law’, to explain these dynamics. The chapter traces the process through which the spiritual significance of cattle declined, under the influence of the secular state, and instead, under born-again Christian doctrines, the individual human (body and soul) emerged as the prime means of communicating with God. Cattle in its desacralised form, however, was still used by Messianics for bridewealth payments, and they insisted that their marriage practices were not only the most loyal to Nuer ‘tradition’ but also biblically authentic. The chapter offers new insights on the endurance of pre-Christian practices among African born-again Christians, showing how old ‘customs’ may be deemed relevant and meaningful even under a radically new regime of spiritual mediation.

Chapter 2 begins by addressing some vital preliminary legal issues, including the status of armed groups as international legal persons and the binding force of international law on such actors. The chapter argues that the concept of international legal personhood is best understood as a descriptive term rather than a prerequisite for entities to incur international legal obligations. It further explains that IHL, international human rights law (IHRL) and international criminal law (ICL) contain relevant obligations governing the conduct of trials and passing of penal sentences during NIAC. It demonstrates that whereas the direct application of IHL to armed groups as distinct collective entities is today widely accepted, the direct application of IHRL – despite strong normative arguments in favour – remains disputed and underdeveloped. Finally, this chapter aims to define entities referred to as ‘armed groups’, and clarifies who exactly is bound by the obligations applicable to them.

This chapter argues that the Afrobarometer survey findings indicating South Africans’ preference for housing over land are easily misunderstood. Supported by modern science, it emphasises human interconnectedness as evidenced and grounded in land-based relationships. The chapter therefore critiques the limited world-sense within which ‘property’ is conceived in Ramuhovhi and Malan and, instead, amalgamates vernacular, ‘(un)customary’, and ‘(un)common’ law to illustrate how relationships, ‘seen’ particularly through the spatiotemporal lens of Ubu-Ntu, might deepen our constitutional understanding of ‘property’. It thus shows how the concept of ‘house’ (beyond physical structure) – perceived in ‘vernacular time’, rather than Euromodernity’s ‘colonial time’ – equitably shapes ‘property’ rights, linking them to multigenerational ‘survivance’ and thereby integrating Ntu principles into contemporary legal interpretations. Hence, the chapter concludes the book by demonstrating how embracing the vernacular law conceptions of ‘human(e) existence’, ‘rights’ and ‘house’ would transform the sociolegal reality for South Africans by decolonising it and achieving sustainable socioeconomic change. Returning to encounters in Mbuzini, the chapter ends by highlighting young people’s understandings of Ubu-Ntu and ‘housing’ amidst colonial law’s afterlives and vernacular law’s continued erasure. It contends that true transformation demands respecting the country’s constitutional commitments by genuinely representing all South Africans’ diverse normative ideals.

This chapter presents case studies of Indigenous peace agreements in the Andes region. It begins with an introduction that highlights the significance of understanding legal geography and its relevance to Indigenous peoples. It then explores the legal frameworks that protect Indigenous rights, focusing on international instruments such as declarations and conventions. It then examines specific agreements in the Andes that enact these legal frameworks, with a spotlight on the National Agreement for Development and Peace in La Araucanía, 2018, in Chile, and the Agreement Between the Bolivian Government and the Confederation of Indigenous peoples from the East, Chaco, and Amazonia in 2010. These case studies showcase the intersection of legal, social, and political dynamics in promoting Indigenous rights and fostering peace. By analysing the legal geographies of these agreements, the chapter contributes to a deeper understanding of the complex challenges and opportunities Indigenous communities face in achieving sustainable development and peace in the Andes region.

This chapter builds on the call for ‘Alter-Native Constitutionalism’ due to the inadequacies of South Africa’s transformative constitutionalism in achieving economic and social justice by examining how South Africa’s legal system can realise the necessary shift towards a truly common law. It therefore outlines the technical steps required to amalgamate ‘common’, ‘customary’ and ‘vernacular’ law, proposing a framework where vernacular law – reflecting the lived experiences and cultural norms of the majority population – underpins the whole legal system rather than being confined to isolated ‘cultural’ domains. Drawing on centuries-long debates among scholars of indigenous law, yet recognising that there are foundational similarities between vernacular and state law that can be leveraged, it stresses the care necessary in blending Western and Indigenous knowledges. It highlights that, for this integration to succeed, courts need to adopt a flexible, context-sensitive approach that respects vernacular law’s process-centred-based nature. The chapter thus advocates for preserving vernacular legal processes (because their consultation-based, adaptive structure is key to the law’s legitimacy), as well as vernacular law’s core content (especially around needs-based claims, multigenerational provision and protecting relational structures), as the primary means by which South Africa can achieve a genuinely transformative and common legal order.

A framing case study examines North Korea’s nuclear tests. Then the chapter examines how states make international law. The chapter specifically discusses: (1) treaties, including entry into treaties, reservations, interpretation, and exit; (2) customary international law, including state practice, acceptance as law (opinio juris), and conceptual challenges; and (3) other important factors, including general principles, unilateral declarations, and peremptory norms (jus cogens).

Rights, in the Early Modern era, were conceived in terms of divine and natural law. They were understood to be powers, or faculties, belonging to an individual, or to communities, that had existed from the beginnings of time. The intellectual underpinnings of rights theory were derived from the moral theology of the scholastics, and lay in the idea that rights were a God-given power of the soul, and an expression of active virtue. This was true in the Medieval era, and it remained so in the Early Modern, when the origins of ideas about natural rights lay in the poverty controversies of the mendicant orders in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The appeal to the concept of a natural right was first and foremost a moral endeavour.

In 2007, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognized their particular historical losses and protected their future as collective entities, including their distinctive claims to land. In a multi-sited genealogy, Miranda Johnson explores how long-term historical identities were reforged – in stages after World War II, and against the prevalence of assimilative ideologies – through the elaboration of common Indigenous claim-making of far-flung groups, coming to regard a parallel historic dispossession and current disempowerment.

Rights claims articulated with transregional advocacy in imperial settings as well, becoming a generalizable feature of the twentieth-century imperial world order. Politics of difference and systems of variegated rights, long crucial for building empire, were generative of rights claims-making in non-sovereign territories. Rights talk had political repercussions in European-ruled territories, making rights activism a defining characteristic of modern colonialism.

This part focuses on the foundational aspects of international human rights law, exploring its theoretical, historical, and philosophical underpinnings. It examines the evolution of human rights ideas, the influence of various philosophical traditions, and the ongoing debates about the nature and universality of human rights. The sections address the epistemological ruptures between philosophy and law, and between law and justice, highlighting the challenges in reconciling these perspectives within a coherent human rights framework. The part also delves into normative pluralism, discussing the coexistence and interaction of multiple legal systems and norms within the global human rights framework. It covers treaty-based structures, customary international law, general principles of law, and the role of judicial decisions and soft law instruments. By critically analyzing these foundational elements, this part aims to provide a deeper understanding of the principles and values that underpin international human rights law and to highlight the complexities and nuances involved in defining and protecting human rights in diverse cultural and legal contexts.

The distinct prohibitions of torture and other forms of ill-treatment have crystallized as customary international law as the chapter discusses. In the specific case of torture, its prohibition is also a peremptory (jus cogens) norm of international law – a rule that is applicable in all circumstances and in any place. The chapter also discusses the geographical, material, personal, and temporal jurisdiction of the prohibitions of torture and other ill-treatment under international law more generally.

Territorial jurisdiction will require tribes to further develop their legal systems. People often assume tribal law is exotic, based upon ancient customs. While tribal law often includes customs, many legal systems do. Moreover, tribal law is often indistinguishable from state law. This is not assimilation; rather, this is to be expected. Many laws are universal because people generally want the same basic things. For example, theft and murder are prohibited everywhere. Likewise, tribes banned these offenses long before Europeans arrived on the continent. Though tribal law can deviate from standard Anglo-American law, different does not necessarily mean bad. Additionally, tribal courts usually resemble state and federal courts. Despite negative stereotypes, studies show tribal courts treat non-Indians fairly. Nevertheless, lack of funding – largely due to state taxation – inhibits tribes’ ability to develop bureaucracy. Lack of funding also prevents some tribes from publishing their laws. A possible solution to tribal institutional capacity is the creation of intertribal business courts. The intertribal nature of the tribunal will provide more resources to increase administrative capacity and help eliminate perceptions of bias.