The Loseby Lecture: The Rule Of Law with Professor Fernanda Pirie

In this episode of the Britcham Podcast, Matt Ryland, Executive Director of British Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam, introduces guest speaker Professor Fernanda Pirie.

Drawing from her expertise in legal anthropology, Pirie discusses the evolution of international law over thousands of years. She elaborates on significant events and examples from the early codes of Hammurabi to medieval international trade practices and the advent of modern era global conventions. 

She underscores how people have found lawmaking useful to smoothen international transactions despite the lack of direct sanctions. 

The podcast concludes highlighting the influence and prevalence of international law in today's society.

00:00 Introduction and Background of the Lecture
02:13 Historical Context of International Law
04:39 The Role of Law in International Relations
07:05 The Evolution of International Law
07:55 The Role of Law in Global Challenges
12:35 The Impact of Law on Trade and Commerce
44:54 The Influence of Law on International Organizations

For more information about the Britcham Chamber of Commerce Vietnam please visit www.britchamvn.com

Transcript

Matt: 0:10

Welcome to the Britcham Podcast. My name is Matt Ryland, Executive Director of the British Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam. This episode, we're going to look back at a recent Britjam event, the Lowsby Lecture. This is an annual event sponsored by Dragon Capital Vietnam. Over the past six years, these lectures have addressed different areas of international law, connecting representatives of departments, organisations, legal experts, and lawyers, and a wider interested audience. These lectures are named in remembrance of Frank Lowsby. A solicitor who acted for Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong in the early 1930s. This year's edition was titled, The Long History of International Legal Relations and the Rule of Law. The lecture was delivered by Professor Fernanda Piri, a distinguished scholar specialising in the realm of legal anthropology at the Faculty of Law, at Oxford University. Professor Fernanda Piri uses anthropological and comparative methods to compare legal practices and texts from around the world. She has carried out ethnographic fieldwork at both ends of the Tibetan plateau and also conducted historical work on Tibetan legal texts. The Rule of Laws, a 4, 000 year quest to order the world, her most recent book, is a global history of law. It traces the rise and fall of the world's major legal systems and compares examples of historic lawmaking worldwide. It is an amazing journey to hear how international law emerged and has developed into the modern world today. Enjoy the journey.

Fernanda Pirie: 1:54

well, good afternoon everyone. I'm delighted to be here. Particular thanks to BritCham and to Dragon Capital for sponsoring and organising this event, for giving me the opportunity to speak to such a distinguished audience. and to visit, albeit briefly, your wonderful country. So... What can history tell us about international law? Well, I want to start in 1931, when Ho Chi Minh, then 40, was arrested by the British authorities in Hong Kong. Their counterparts in French Indochina, as it was then called, had sentenced Ho to death in his absence. And they now put pressure on the British to detain him. They claimed that Ho was in seditious material. This wasn't true, as the Hong Kong authorities discovered. But they retained Ho, and the French demanded his extradition. The British were initially inclined to comply, largely for political reasons. And that was when Frank Loseby stepped in. He made an application for habeas corpus on behalf of Ho, which eventually came to the Privy Council in London. The Colonial Office then instructed Sir Stafford Cripps, a leading KC, to advise. Cripps advised the government to release Ho. and allow him to leave Hong Kong. What interests me here, leading into the subject of this lecture, is not so much the activities of Ho, or Lowsby, themselves, nor the merits of the application for habeas corpus, but why Cripps gave the advice that he did. We don't know for sure what he thought, and some people criticized him at the time for acting out of political motives. He was, after all, a member of the British Labour Party. But it seems that Cripps advised the Colonial Office. That, although it could legally make a deportation order, this would be a sham. It would, in effect, be the extradition order requested by the French. And this would not be legal under the terms of the Franco British Extradition Treaty of This treaty was an agreement between two states, so it's a form of international law. And that meant there would be no direct sanctions if the British contravened its terms. In any event, in this case, the French were hardly going to complain if the British made the order. But, Cripps said, there would be a public outcry if the order went ahead, and the reputations of both Britain and Hong Kong. So I'm not going to delve further into this case here, or give an opinion on Cripps advice, or the merits of the legal position. Rather, I want to reflect on the operation of international law, and what the case reflects about its historic importance, in both political and economic terms. The Franco British Treaty was an agreement between nation states, like the treaties the UN regularly makes today. It's an element of international law. In practice, other countries can put pressure on states to comply with their obligations, but they can't force them to do so, as we have seen in the course of recent armed conflicts. These are international laws. There are also what scholars call transnational laws. These are arrangements made by non state actors. Often commercial organizations. They include such things as banking conventions, pharmaceutical standards, codes for the trading of swaps and derivatives, the rules of international sports federations, internet regulations, and so on. Sometimes states decide to become parties to these conventions, then they become more like international laws. But for my purposes today, the important point is that both sorts of laws operate in very different ways to state laws. They are not made by a single sovereign authority that can guarantee them. They are not subject to direct sanctions. And a number of legal theorists have suggested that for these reasons, international and transnational law is not really law. But, as I will show in this lecture, different sorts of people have been making these sorts of laws for millennia. Kings, traders, religious figures, mercantile networks. Indeed, they're some of the first laws ever made. So it's worth looking back in history to ask why people have regularly made laws like this. Why did they make laws that couldn't be directly enforced? What were they trying to achieve? What effects did such laws actually have? And I think this can shed some light on the importance and effects of international law today. Grips himself pointed to reputation as a key issue in his advice to the British government. And this is an issue that recurs again and again in my historic examples. At the same time, mercantile laws have been practically useful in facilitating all sorts of commercial relations. And I will suggest that the two issues, reputation and commercial pragmatism, are related. So my first example takes us back to Mesopotamia, in the third millennium before the Common Era. It was then a fertile agricultural region between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, in what is now Iraq. The urban populations lived in walled cities. Cuneiform writing appeared about this time, probably initially to record donations made to the temples. By the middle of that millennium, people were using this writing to record speech, which dramatically expanded what they could do with it. Some of the earliest inscriptions were invocations made to the gods, by the city's rulers, and included promises to rule their people justly. In this era, Mesopotamian warlords regularly attacked one another. They plundered their cities, enslaved their populations. But to establish legitimacy in the eyes of the population, most felt they had to promise to rule fairly. And in their inscriptions, the conquerors often criticized the previous rulers and their corrupt officials, and promised to put everything on a better and more just footing. And this was the context in which the first laws were made. The oldest come from about 2100 BC. Made by a warlord called Ur Namur, who'd recently seized power in the city of Ur, down here. An inscription tells us that he established new systems of taxation, he standardised weights and measures, and promised to relieve poverty and redress inequalities among citizens. And this inscription is followed by a set of about 37 laws. The laws themselves are quite pragmatic. They direct punishment or compensation for things like murder, injury, false imprisonment, and sexual offences. They specify what should happen to slaves who have relations with their owners or otherwise behave badly. There are rules for divorce and marriage, oaths and accusations, and agricultural disputes. But interestingly, there's no evidence that the laws are ever directly applied. Case records survive, but they make no reference to these laws. And it's the same for the most famous set of Mesopotamian laws created about four centuries later in Babylon. Hammurabi. The ruler of Babylon, here, had already spent decades successfully waging war on all his rivals until he was the undisputed ruler of a vast territory. And it was at that point, after all this, that he turned his attention back to his own city, Babylon. He constructed splendid temples, he laid out complex irrigation systems, and he made laws. He commissioned several sets of law stones, huge granite slabs, with an imposing picture of the king at the top, standing before the god of the sun. So this example is in the Louvre Museum in Paris. Do go and have a look if you have the chance. So Hammurabi here is clearly receiving authority to make his laws. And this example is just one of several law stones that Hammurabi placed around his kingdom, marking out the extent of his authority. Underneath, the writing details about 300 laws. And they deal with similar subjects to those of Ur Namr. Sorts of practical issues that must have faced Babylonian citizens. Many concern farming activities. For example, if a man cuts down a date orchard without permission, he'll pay 30 shekels of silver. Man's given his field to a gardener to plant as a date orchard. When the gardener's planted it, he'll cultivate it for four years. In the fifth year, the owner and the gardener shall divide the yield in equal shares. The owner shall choose his share first. In other words, sort of profit sharing. Farmland would clearly become a commercial asset. There are rules about buying and selling, renting and mortgaging. Some laws protected farmers who got into debt. If, if anyone owes a debt for a loan, and a storm devastates his field, or a flood sweeps away the crops, Or the grain doesn't grow for lack of water in that year. He needn't give his credit to any grain. He can suspend the contract and pay no interest for the year. Then there are provisions for family matters, dowry bride wealth support for widows and children's inheritance. There are also detailed rules for commercial transactions, interest rates, profits, debt restraint, and the custody of goods, for example. If a man has an interest bearing loan, doesn't have the silver with which to repay, he shall take grain and silver in accordance with the Royal Edict, and the interest on it at the annual rate of 60 silos per car, 20%. If the merchant should attempt to increase and collect the interest on the loan up to the grain interest of 100 silos of grain, 33%, or in any other way beyond 36 barleycorns, that's 20%, he shall forfeit whatever he's given. So there's a restriction on here on interest rates. And there's this. If a merchant gives silver to a trading agent for an investment and the agent incurs a loss on his journeys, he'll return the silver to the merchant in the amount of the capital sum. But if enemy forces should make him abandon whatever good he's transporting while on his business trip, the trading agent shall swear an oath by the god and shall be released. There are other rules which say that agents must obtain sealed receipts for any money they pay to their merchants. And if they fail to do this, the amount will be excluded from the final account. So all sorts of rules for commercial transactions. It's not always so different from the sorts of problems that commercial lawyers face today. But curiously, there's no evidence that any of these laws were directly applied in the Babylonian courts. Many case records survive, but there's no indication that the judges ever referred to Hammurabi's laws directly. Or that they follow the rules closely. So in some cases the law seemed to be more like records of decided cases which Ham Abi chose because they represented important principles relief from agricultural debt after we've seen compensation for damage to property. So maybe ham Abi never expected them to be directly applied, but if so, what were they for? Why did he put all this effort into commissioning scribes to craft the rules, instructing masons to inscribe them on granite slabs, commanding armies of laborers to transport them to different parts of his kingdom? Well, there may be two related reasons. Firstly, the laws represented the sort of justice that Hammurabi wanted to promise his people. Even successful Mesopotamian warlords had to secure the loyalty of their populations. They had to persuade the people of the cities they'd conquered to accept their authority as new rulers, and even more so than nomadic tribes who lived in the deserts beyond the city's walls. Promising justice was a way of persuading them to become citizens. But the second reason, it's at simply setting out rules that citizens ought to comply with. Particularly those on mercantile transactions would've helped to smooth that complex and potentially antagonistic commercial relations. By this time, Mesopotamian merchants were trading with partners in the Arabian Peninsula and the distant Indus Valley. They imported copper, cornelian, and lapis lazuli. They sent finely woven cloth to Anatolia, now Turkey, and brought back silver. And the laws obviously reflect the sorts of practices and issues the traders faced. And they tell the traders how to make agreements and deal with breaches of contract. They specify grounds for repudiation. They direct how losses should be apportioned, as we've seen. And they also set out rules for security, mortgages, guarantees, and so on. And much of Babylon's wealth must have come from this trade. And it was in the ruler's interest to ensure it was smooth and profitable. Hammurabi must have consulted officials and judges, who would have told him about the sorts of disputes they were called to resolve. And he would have instructed his lawmakers to make the sorts of rules they hoped would help avoid such problems. So, even without direct means of enforcement, we find mercantile rules carefully formulated to regulate ongoing trade relations among the earliest laws made anywhere in the world. So moving on in history a bit, over the following centuries, new legal systems developed and disappeared in different parts of Eurasia. Hammurabi's laws were copied by Assyrians and Persians who conquered Mesopotamia. They provided inspiration to the scribes who wrote the laws of the Old Testament over a millennium later. Jewish scholars later developed complex laws for their people which became the Mishnah and the Talmud. In India, the Brahmins created the Dharmashastras to guide Hindu people and entrench the caste system. In turn, the Dharmashastras inspired the scribes who created laws for the Buddhist kingdoms of Southeast Asia. These also looked at their own religious texts for guiding principles and took inspiration from Confucian principles. In China itself, legalist scholars created codes for the emperors. Meanwhile, Rome developed its own legal system, and later the birth of Islam in the Middle East gave rise to more lawmaking. Over the centuries, Islamic legal scholars developed vast libraries of texts, with rules that were followed by Muslims throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond, as they still are. So, while all these projects were unfolding, while kingdoms, empires, and caliphates rose and fell, merchants continued to trade across borders. And they continue to formulate their own rules, standards, and commercial instruments. Many have left no records, but a hoard of documents discovered in Egypt gives us excellent evidence of the Jewish merchants who dominated Mediterranean trade in the 10th, 12th centuries. So by this point, powerful Islamic caliphates had come to control lucrative mercantile networks that stretched throughout Asia. From the Spice Islands on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, right into Medieval Europe. Arab merchants brought exotic goods overland to the ports in Egypt, into the Crimea, around the Aegean, the Adriatic Seas, while African caravans... Carried precious materials across the Sahara, north to North African harbors. And ships crossed the Mediterranean in all directions. So the Jewish merchants I'm going to talk about form colonies and towns on both sides of the Mediterranean, where they lived alongside Islamic, Christian, and other populations. Overall, this was a pretty turbulent time. The Muslim Fatimids had just expelled the Abbasids from North Africa. they'd, the Fatimids had established a capital in Cairo, the Seljuks were encroaching from the east, prompting the Christian Crusades, then came the Mamluks from Central Asia in the mid 12th century. But more or less throughout, everyone, the Caliphs, the Crusaders, the warlords, recognized the importance of the merchants and their trade. And despite the conflicts, they allowed ships to cross the seas, caravans to come in from east and north, east and south, more or less unmolested. So many of the Jewish merchants lived and worked in Fustat, close to Cairo. The Fatimid Caliphs largely left them to organize their own affairs. They recognized the Jews secular leader, the Nagid. who acted as an intermediary with the Fatimid government and gave assistance in collecting taxes. In turn, the Shoylen Hagid, would ask the Fatimids if he needed help. For example, when pirates from Tripoli captured a ship containing one of the most eminent Jewish scholars and his family. In Fustat, there were three separate Jewish congregations, each with its own synagogue, which was centers for communal affairs. For their part, the merchants established hostels where foreign partners could stay and where they entered into partnerships and agency agreements. They drew up contracts about the divisions of profits and losses. They made arrangements for bailment, and so on. And all of this was carefully documented. Among the hordes of documents found in Cairo, many record the accounts taken at the end of a business venture. They indicate how the merchants had divided the remaining goods and money, and often how they went on to renew the partnership for another venture. And for all these transactions, they used standard legal forms. If disputes occurred, they could take a case to the Chief Justice. There was one in each of the three Jewish congregations, and they held court twice a week. Sometimes these judges delegated the cases to more junior judges, and they also recognized and approved decisions made by informal tribunals, groups of elders or other merchants, who would get together to settle disputes. In successful cases, they were called on a trained scribe to draw up an agreement in a proper legal form. These groups of people could also act in more pragmatic ways than the judges. One document, for example, records how a Jewish mercen, merchant in Cairo, had sold some substandard wine shortly before he set off for Athens. By the time the buyer discovered the problem, the seller had disappeared. So the buyer brought a case against the merchant's father. A Jewish judge refused to hear the buyer's petition. He held that the father was not legally responsible for the activities of his son, but a group of upright elders, as the document calls them, successfully put pressure on the father to pay compensation to the buyer. And it goes on to record, the father eventually paid every single instalment. So in practice, the elders were often able to negotiate a settlement before a case went to court. If not, a judge would investigate and decide on the central facts. He would then present it to an expert for a legal opinion and occasionally that expert would refer it on to somebody even more senior. In a really important case, he could request advice from the highest Jewish legal scholars in Jerusalem or Baghdad, the Geonim. 20th century, but these are the descendants of the medieval Jewish scholars. When the judge received the legal opinion, he would again encourage the parties to settle. Which they often did, but if not, he knew he decided a wrong had been committed, he could order payment of a fine, or critically, banishment. Banishment or expulsion was serious. No Jew was supposed to have any dealing with someone who'd been expelled. Not even allowed to talk to them or shake their hands. Couldn't offer food or shelter, and certainly not supposed to enter into business transactions with nor could the outlaw enter the synagogue and he wouldn't be allowed a burial. There are records of Cairo judges threatening to expel an insolvent debtor, for example, who had broken a solemn promise to pay his creditors a percentage of their debts. An expulsion could also work across borders. The Jewish community formed an effective legal network, so in one case, a judge in the city of Aiden. Now in the Yemen, heard that a Jewish merchant from Baghdad, who was then living in India, was intending to free to Sri Lanka to avoid paying his debtors. So the judge made an order to expel the merchant from the Jewish community. In cases like these, the judges could send orders to their counterparts in different countries throughout the Jewish world. And also received orders, copies of orders made elsewhere, which they were supposed to recognize and enforce. And they did. In many cases, Cairo judges had to consider commercial agreements made between Jewish merchants living elsewhere. In Spain, Sicily, Egypt, even in India. They often recognized the signatures of the judges who'd authorized the documents, even if they'd never met them. It was a connected world. At the same time, the Jewish judges had no easy means to enforce their judgments. They had to put pressure on the parties to settle, or ask elders to negotiate. And if all else failed, they had to threaten expulsion. But what made it all work was a sense that the Jewish law, and the opinions of the Jewish legal authorities, wherever they lived, ought to be respected by everyone. Respect for the law was one of the reasons for the success of the Jewish merchants. And the legal system was also pragmatic. In principle, all the Fustat Jews followed the Torah, the laws their rabbis explained to them in their synagogues. But over the centuries, the merchants adapted its rules to new economic conditions. Contracts often concluded that they were written in a form instituted by our scholars and used in the world. That was making a reference to mercantile custom. One trader consulted one of the Geonim about the validity of bills of exchange. These were traditionally not enforceable in Jewish law. But, the scholar declared, our scholars have said that one should not send bills of exchange. But we see that people actually use them, therefore we admit them in court, since otherwise commerce would come to a standstill. We're giving judgment in accordance with the laws of the merchants. The most famous of Cairo's Jewish scholars was Maimonides. He wrote a text on the traditional Jewish law of contracts, and he explained that traditionally oral agreements weren't binding. Thus, he continued, oral contracts could now be effective, because they were essential to the smooth running of Mediterranean trade. Though this international trade, it did throw up some legal difficulties. Most Jews were Rabbinites, that means they recognized the Torah, but there was a Karaite minority who didn't, and they developed different legal forms for their contractual arrangements. So in one case, a scribe at the rabbi's court in Acre, now in Israel, had to authorize the sale of cheese by a Karaite merchant to Rabbanite purchase in Cairo. Sheep's cheese was very popular in the Middle East, and many merchants made huge profits buying up supplies in Sicily, Crete, and Palestine. and shipping them to Egypt and India. So in this case, the scribes certified the quality of the cheese, that it was suitable for Jewish consumption. But he had to use clever legal technicalities to satisfy both the Rabbanite purchasers, and the Karaite sellers. And when Jewish traders entered into contracts with Muslims, which they often did, the scribes had to be even more careful to satisfy the legal requirements of both parties. So, Jewish merchants operate in a complex legal environment. They had to recognize the laws of the Torah, respect their religious leaders, enter into practical arrangements with members of difficult communities and find ways to respect all these different laws. All this was a challenge, but merchants were generally pragmatic and they knew they needed to maintain reputations as trustworthy partners who would respect the agreements they entered into. It was hardly a unified, let alone a centralized system of mercantile law but everyone accepted the principle that trading relations should be governed by clear agreements... and that to maintain a reputation, traders had to keep their agreements... and respect different communities laws. So this is just these sorts the sorts of dynamics that characterize trading relations... in many different contexts over time. By the 13th century... Italian merchants from, particularly from Venice and Genoa, the Italians had largely displaced the Jewish traders and come to dominate the Mediterranean. And they initially continued many of the Jewish legal practices and copied their partnership arrangements. Over time, they developed increasingly sophisticated contracts and bills of exchange. These allowed them to receive payment in different currencies. And they employed specialist notaries to draft the agreements to use with distant partners. And they would try to anticipate difficulties and disagreements and help the parties avoid the courts. So when problems did arise, the European merchants could take them to specialist courts at the trade fairs. And the most famous of these were held annually in Champagne in Northern France. So if you jump up here, you can see all the trade routes around Western Europe leading to Champagne. Merchants arrived from all over Europe and stayed for two or three weeks at a series of fairs held in the region to sell their local wares and buy luxuries that had come in from Africa and the Far East. And at the fairs were specialist mercantile courts, where the judges were familiar with the practicalities of commercial activities. They understood standard loan agreements, how they worked, pledges, and agency arrangements. As regards to the law, the mercantile judges applied, for the most part, applied the rules and principles developed in the European civil and common law systems. But they adapted their procedures to the merchants movements. They made decisions quickly, before the merchants have to move on. And although their decisions were not backed by sanctions, the merchants generally complied, as far as we can tell. Their reputations were at stake. And in the Far East, too. Taiwanese merchants developed similar relationships with their partners on the Chinese mainland. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Taiwanese merchants shipped rice, sugar, and camphor across the Taiwanese Strait to China. They mainly relied on trade practices to determine responsibility for losses and defects. And they drew up detailed legal documents to specify rights and duties. It seems they often contracted with trading partners they'd never even met. And in these cases, they were very careful to ensure their documents were clear and detailed. Above all, they wanted to avoid going to the local courts. in China, where they would face severe delays. And the Chinese magistrates didn't understand the commercial context of their transactions. Or the constraints and requirements of cross border trade. In fact, the Chinese legal system itself gave little guidance on commercial transactions. It was concerned more with enabling state officials to control its own populations, so the merchants couldn't rely on the Chinese laws to enforce the terms of their contracts. Still merchants on both sides of the Taiwanese Strait engaged in a common endeavor for profit, and it was important for both of them to be able to trust their trading partners. So, in general, it seems they respected trade practices and merchants on both sides relied on the contracts they had negotiated. So now I want to move into a more recent, period of legal history and 19th century Europe. By now, Europe had changed beyond recognition and colonial powers dominated much of Asia and Africa. A new world order was gradually emerging. So this maps from 1837. As they emerged, the new nation states developed their own legal system. In civil law countries, these were codes, often copied from France's Code Napoléon. But as the European states began to define their boundaries more clearly, international merchants, financiers, and economists were all concerned that the new borders would present barriers to free trade. So in 1847, a Belgian association invited political economists from different countries to an international meeting. Here, the delegates agreed to encourage their governments to draft international commercial treaties. And negotiated agreements on tariffs. It was the beginning of a new era in international law. The 19th century saw great technical developments, and this encouraged scientists and engineers to standardize tools, techniques, and measures for international use. And these resulted in new transporter organizations like the International Telegraph Union, the International Electro Technical Commission Agreements to coordinate aviation, to establish universal radio call signs and so on. By the beginning of World War I, there were dozens of organizations coordinating the use of international infrastructure for the telegraph, the postal system, railways, and roads. European governments and international institutions convened one conference after another to formulate standards for weights and measures to protect intellectual property and coordinate scientific study. Humanitarian concerns also prompted international lawmaking. There were agreements to eliminate slavery. and the Geneva Conventions tried to prevent atrocities in wartime. There were also moves to harmonize private laws on marriage, divorce, and guardianship. Notably, the first Hague Conference on Private International Law in 1893. After World War I, the League of Nations was established, and this set up an international institution for the unification of private law, later unidroit. Meanwhile, commercial organizations continued to make international agreements. These included the International Commission for Air Navigation, ICAN, which made rules for traffic, aircraft identity, and safety. The Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I established the International Labour Organization, the ILO, which campaigned to restrict working hours, to end child labour, and to make ship owners liable for accidents to seamen, etc. The League of Nations also established an International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation, the Precursor to UNESCO. There was a Commission for Refugees, a Slavery Commission, a Permanent Central Opium Board. the League of Nations Health Organization continued the work of the 19th Century Sanitary Conferences, developing international measures to combat cholera, yellow fever, and the bubonic plague. A number of national organizations also got together to form the International Organization for Standards. The precursor to the ISO. Then after World War II came the establishment, of course, of the UN, which is now responsible for a great many international treaties and organizations. But very many different groups and organizations have continued to promote rules, standards, and procedures for international cooperation and coordination. And some of the most successful have been in the sphere of finance. For example, the Bank for International Settlements, founded in 1930, and based in Basel, in Switzerland. took responsibility for stabilizing national currencies. In the 1970s came the rapid growth of international financial markets and then the collapse of major banks in Germany and the US, which led to the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Meanwhile, the International Organization of Securities Commissions was established in Madrid to regulate the world's securities and futures markets. An international competition network was established in 2001. And there's the Wassenaar Agreement, which imposes export controls on conventional arms. And alongside the UN itself, there are several international regional organizations, including competition networks among Central American and Andean countries, the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation, established in 1989, the Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa, etc., etc. So many of these organizations are now dominated by state representatives. But private organizations have also established international agreements. In 1985, derivatives dealers established... International Swaps and Derivatives Association. which creates international standards for contracts and forms of language for their transactions. Then in 2008, an international group of wealth fund managers formed the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds. I expect many of you may know much more about these than I do. There's an International Diamond Manufacturers Association and many other organizations which create standards for best practice in particular industries. So all these organizations try to smooth out international transactions to establish trust and to provide means for dispute resolution, which are not so different from the objectives of the medieval merchants who created standard forms of contract and rules for international trade 500 years ago. And it's probably inevitable that alongside the UN, organizations and conventions will continue to emerge in ad hoc ways. Indeed, their efforts are probably necessary to global development. So the Internet is obviously a case in point. The Internet itself was created and managed by engineers and researchers who established the Internet Engineering Task Force in 1986 to set technical standards. It was that this was initially supported by the US government, which also established the International Cooperation for Assigned Names and Networks, ICANN. But then, some of the internet pioneers became concerned about free access. And they set up the Internet Society in 1992, with the aim to promote free, equitable, universal, and stable development and beneficial use. And that now has a global membership of over 100, 000 organizations and individuals. Meanwhile, Tim Berners Lee, one of the founders of the internet, established the World Wide Web Consortium. Another forum for the discussion of technical standards. And it regularly consults the task force, the Internet Society. And all three cooperate with the ISO, and the International Electrotechnical Commission. And then there's sport. That also has international bodies and arbitration procedures. The International Olympic Committee was established to organize the first modern games in Athens in 1896. It continues selecting its own members. There are now about a hundred from different countries. It recognizes national Olympic committees, it makes rules for their constitutions and activities, and it sets up an organizing committee for each Games. Then in 1984, the IOC, the International Olympic Committee, established a court of arbitration to hear disputes that were arising in connection with the Olympic Games. Since then, the issue of doping has become a problem for sports worldwide. And in 1989, the Council of Europe established the Anti Doping Convention. This maintains a list of prohibited substances and creates regulations to combat drug use. And a decade later, in the late 90s, the International, The Olympic Committee set up the World Anti Doping Agency, which formulated a World Anti Doping Code to harmonize regulations worldwide, which is considered by the, Court of Arbitration for Sport. So all these international laws, legal rules and principles, and courts, established to meet practical needs. Setting them up obviously requires time and effort. And even the UN conventions and multilateral treaties don't always have global effects. China, for example, has effectively challenged the authority of the International Monetary Fund to control exchange rate practices. And international laws have hardly prevented conflict. But many agreements and rules are effective, even if they're not backed by enforcement mechanisms. They laid out rules like the registration of domain names. They set standards that technicians and others, users, have to recognize. And like the IOC, the Diamond Traders Association, and ICANN, many deal with disputes and set up arbitration mechanisms, which develop procedural rules to address the sorts of issues of justice and fairness that inevitably arise. So this is what we could call the international rule of law. Among all these transnational groups and networks, there's a sense has emerged that on the international stage, as well as within modern states, important relations should be guided by legal principles. And these international rules range from very pragmatic standards for units of measurement, to rules that govern trading standards in specialist areas, to instruments with explicitly moral purposes, restrictions on the trade in blood diamonds, and attempts to abolish slavery. So on one level, we could understand these laws in purely pragmatic terms. If enough engineers with enough influence decide to use standard units and measurements, well, other organizations simply have to follow suit if they want to trade internationally. And that's probably how many of Hammurabi's laws worked about 4, 000 years ago. Powerful Mesopotamian traders could probably set the terms that their partners had to agree to. But many international rules are also important as markers of quality and reputation. Organizations like the Swaps and Derivatives Association or the International Diamond Manufacturers Association publicize standards in order to invite public confidence. The implication is they won't accept anyone as a member of their organization who fails to meet these standards. and they will expel anyone who does breach them. So they're really acting just like the Jewish judges who were sitting in the Cairo courts a thousand years ago, who would expel any merchant who didn't comply with their standards and breached their contractual obligations. So looking at all these transnational laws, Some researchers and lawyers have expressed concerns about the proliferation of these international rules and the difficulty of establishing hierarchies among them. Others ask how informal laws produced by trade associations can be made more democratic and more accountable. A few maintain they're not really laws. But this is to judge them by the ideals of state law. The historical examples I've shown indicate that many laws particularly those governing international trade, work in quite different ways. They can't be judged according to the standards of democracy of the processes by which they're established and formulated. Although they can be judged according to the extent to which they ensure fairness, for example, among internet users. And no one expects the Geneva Conventions and other international laws will prevent all armed aggression, as recent events in Ukraine and Israel have shown all too clearly. But people still think it's worth citing them. It still matters to many of us that Russia and Israel can be considered to have broken international laws. Both international and transnational laws have always been and should continue to be understood and judged according to the standards of justice. and fairness they seek to promote. Not just by whether they can be effectively enforced. So this lecture has sought to do two things. Firstly, it's illustrated the extent to which people and organisations engaged in very different international activities have found lawmaking useful, even when the rules are not backed by direct sanctions. Secondly, it's shed some light on the reasons that people have long considered, and still considered, they have obligations to comply with such laws. As the historical examples indicate, the idea that just rulers, reputable merchants, and those responsible for international organizations should respect the law, is as old as law itself. Hammurabi was trying to portray himself as a just ruler, so he made public laws that could, at least in theory, be quoted by anyone. It was a form of the rule of law, even if there were no direct enforcement mechanisms. to guarantee the operation of the rules. The medieval merchants respected the laws of their own religion, and also knew they could only retain the trust of their partners if they complied with their written agreements and established trade practices. It's not so different in the modern world. By signing up to explicit codes of conduct, members of financial and trading networks are inviting trust. Governments, as well as commercial organisations, can be criticised if they do not participate in international agreements to advance ethical business practices, for example. And they know they will receive criticism from all sides if they breach international law. The sense that international laws enshrine moral standards is what Cripps was articulating when he advised a UK government not to convene an international treaty. Its reputation, as he said, was at stake. So as a British citizen, I have many reasons to be embarrassed, even ashamed, about historical activities of my country on the international stage, especially, though not only, during the colonial era. But at least in this case, the government took the advice of a leading lawyer, and did the right thing, and released Ho Chi Minh.

Matt: 44:58

Thank you very much. A lot to take in on the foundation's development of international law and its impact on today's society. appreciate your time. If I could invite, Tom Vasey from Dragon Capital on stage to say a few closing remarks.

Tom: 45:15

thank you very much, Professor Pirrie, for your very, very stimulating and interesting, discussion. I'd also like to thank, the organization, from, British Chamber of Commerce. Matt Ryland, the Executive Director. thank you very much. And, also, Mr. Chris Millican, the Vice Chair. and, Mr. Ken Atkinson, a board member of, BritCham. Thank you very much for all of the, effort that's gone into organizing, Professor Piri's visit, today. but the, biggest vote of thanks, of course, is to Professor Pirie for taking the time. and Trouble to, put together the talk, to travel, to visit us here, and, especially as it's actually the middle of the Oxford term, as well, so, it's really been a special effort, on, on her part, with all her other, obligations, to come and speak to us. So, many thanks, and, Thank you all for coming.

Matt: 46:15

I hope you enjoyed the journey through time, how international law has evolved to where it is in the present, in so much that we do, and in most cases, respected. For more information on British and Vietnam, please visit www. britishandvn. com. Thank you for listening, and see you next time.