Klabbers, Jan; Wallendahl, Åsa --- "Preface" [2011] ELECD 516; in Klabbers, Jan; Wallendahl, Åsa (eds), "Research Handbook on the Law of International Organizations" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Research Handbook on the Law of International Organizations

Editor(s): Klabbers, Jan; Wallendahl, Åsa

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847201355

Section Title: Preface

Author(s): Klabbers, Jan; Wallendahl, Åsa

Number of pages: 2

Extract:

Preface


International organizations, in their current form, have been around since the
nineteenth century, and since the 1920s the law relating to them (international
institutional law, or the law of international organizations) has been dominated
by a single framework: that of functionalism. Ever since the Permanent Court
of International Justice, in the case involving the European Danube
Commission, connected the powers of international organizations to their
functions, the discipline has been wearing the same, functionalist spectacles.
Yet, this perspective seems no longer fully appropriate: often enough these
days, complaints are raised about organizations overstepping their mandates,
or engaging in quasi-sovereign activities, or violating rules of international
law, including human rights law. And surely, where human rights violations
take place, these are difficult to justify by suggesting that, after all, the func-
tioning of the organization warrants that such violations be deemed accept-
able. In short, the functionalist perspective has lost some of its glamour, and
is slowly coming to be replaced, or at least complemented, by a different
perspective which, for convenience's sake, we will refer to as the constitu-
tionalist perspective. The focus has changed, in other words, towards control-
ling international bureaucracies, instead of giving them carte blanche to do as
they see fit.
The aim of this book is to explore how this paradigm shift is affecting the
various doctrinal issues that together make up the law of international organi-
zations. How, e.g., does constitutionalism become visible in the law on privi-
leges and ...