The book ends with a brief discussion of key conclusions. My four substantive chapters demonstrate different accounts of making-good-again. Read together, they show how the conduct of restitution emerges as a material question of responsibility which is asked through texts and objects in different genres, including law. Responsibility as a material practice is shown to be dynamic, contingent and contextual, shaped by personae and places.

The book begins by situating my key phrase ‘making-good-again’ through contrasting the history of the terms Wiedergutmachung and restitution. I give a brief history of understandings of responsibility and introduce my argument regarding material practice. Part two gives a brief overview of the methods used in the book, situating my approach in relation to jurisprudence and current approaches in law, humanities and their intersections.

This chapter describes how the Caribbean Court of Justice is embedded within colonial legacies that have affected regional political norms and legal culture. It shows the CCJ’s decisions are characterized by moderate deference, infrequently ruling in favor of states and typically eschewing restrictive interpretation. More deference, however, is observed through the Court’s remedial orders. The chapter links the CCJ’s tendency to not defer to its intermediate political constraints. Specifically, the CCJ’s strategic space is shaped by high formal independence that is partially offset by homogeneous state preferences. These factors combine to affect the Court’s legitimacy and signal when state resistance might be feasible and credible. In particular, the CCJ defers more when states are clearly aligned. The Court’s nondeference is facilitated by the Court’s practices of persuasive argumentation and public legitimation. The chapter also suggests the CCJ’s support network lacks the robustness necessary to account for its moderate deference.

This chapter provides an overview of the evolution and current dynamics in international administrative law, emphasizing the unprecedented growth in international administrative tribunals (IATs) over the past three decades. The introduction outlines the structural, quantitative, and qualitative changes reshaping this field, including the expansion in the use of non-staff personnel and the increase in the importance of human rights within international administrative law. The chapter highlights IATs’ convergence on common issues across diverse institutions, and explains the study’s approach and methodology, focussing on jurisprudential commonalities and the emergence of shared procedural standards across tribunals.

This chapter provides an overview of the evolution and current dynamics in international administrative law, emphasizing the unprecedented growth in international administrative tribunals (IATs) over the past three decades. The introduction outlines the structural, quantitative, and qualitative changes reshaping this field, including the expansion in the use of non-staff personnel and the increase in the importance of human rights within international administrative law. The chapter highlights IATs’ convergence on common issues across diverse institutions, and explains the study’s approach and methodology, focussing on jurisprudential commonalities and the emergence of shared procedural standards across tribunals.

This chapter describes how the creation and functioning of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights are shaped by the colonial past and its impacts on political norms and legal culture. It shows the ACtHPR’s decisions are characterized by minimal deference, as it commonly rules against states, abstains from restrictive interpretation, and issues intrusive remedial orders. The chapter connects the ACtHPR’s nondeference to its subtle political constraints. Specifically, the Court has a broad strategic space due to its relatively high formal independence and politically fragmented membership. These factors combine to enhance the Court’s legitimacy and suggest that collective state resistance is impracticable. Yet following exit from aspects of the Court’s jurisdiction, the Court defers more. The Court’s nondeference is facilitated by the Court’s practices of persuasive argumentation and public legitimation. The chapter also suggests the African Court’s support network cannot fully account for the observed minimal deference.

This chapter describes how the East African Court of Justice is rooted in colonial legacies, which affect regional political norms and legal culture. It shows the EACJ’s decisions are characterized by substantial deference, frequently ruling in favor of states and relying extensively on restrictive interpretation. Less deference, however, is observed through the Court’s remedial orders. The chapter draws linkages between the EACJ’s deference and its pervasive political constraints. Namely, the EACJ’s strategic space is narrowed by weak formal independence and moderate political fragmentation. These two factors combine to undermine the Court’s legitimacy and imply that state resistance is feasible and credible. A significant episode of prior resistance also suggests states could execute future resistance. To the extent the Court does not defer, the chapter reveals how persuasive argumentation and public legitimation facilitate nondeference. Last, the chapter illustrates how the Court’s support networks insufficiently account for its substantial deference.

Represented by the same lawyer of other Protestant groups, the missionaries began using legal avenues to challenge the Italian government in court, arguing that Italy’s constitution had superseded older statutes, including Fascist-era laws being used against them. While this strategy would eventually prove successful, the mission found itself in an increasingly precarious situation. Despite its efforts and the establishment of various branches across the Italian peninsula, it managed to attract only a few hundred members. Funds began to dwindle, forcing the mission to sell some of its most prized properties. The US State Department grew increasingly critical of the mission’s aggressive tactics, viewing them as unnecessarily provocative and ultimately counterproductive. Meanwhile, the mission’s leaders continued to clash with Italian authorities, who at times fined or briefly arrested them, while using visa renewals as leverage to exert pressure on the missionaries. In the United States, the initial enthusiasm of many coreligionists for the Church’s mission in Italy gradually faded, giving way to disillusionment or a shift of focus toward other missionary activities, particularly in the Third World.

Chapter 6 aims to construct a future-looking theoretical framework for handling cultural objects for which questions of past illegality and/or illegitimacy arise but where a potential claimant – whether an individual, a community, or a source nation – is unable to pursue formal legal proceedings against the current possessor, and the relevant law enforcement agencies cannot equally pursue criminal, administrative, or public law proceedings. Accordingly, the chapter seeks to identify normative principles for dealing with the issue of “restitution” (broadly defined) that operates outside the realm of hard-law norms and institutions. It starts by examining the key aspects of the institutional/procedural and normative principles of the restitution committees established in certain European countries and tasked with the development and implementation of “just and fair solutions” to address Holocaust-era wrongful dispossessions. It then considers whether “just and fair solutions” can be devised for other contexts and, if so, how legalistic ethical reasoning could be adapted for these settings. The focus then shifts to the case study of France and its complex approach to the restitution of colonial-era objects to African source countries. The chapter then examines the various remedial mechanisms that are in operation, or that can be developed, to apply such normative principles to broader contexts of addressing past wrongs, including long-term loans, digital restitution, and the establishment of cross-border trusts to enable the joint custody and stewardship of collections. The chapter, and the book, conclude by addressing the role of such a normative blueprint, aligned with the concept of new cultural internationalism, in moving toward the convergence of law, policy, and markets for cultural property.

This chapter concludes the book with normative messages on contexts where states can trust public cooperation without coercion, addressing jurisprudential and normative aspects of governments gaining public cooperation.

Reinach believed that basic legal concepts exist, that their existence is independent of the positive law, and their existence is independent of moral obligation. In this idiosyncratic juxtaposition of positions, Reinach is joined by contemporary theorists drawing on evolutionary psychology and cognitive science in jurisprudence. But Reinach emphatically insisted that his claims were ontological, not psychological. This chapter explains why. For Reinach himself, the ontological status of legal concepts was one front in a broader debate over whether basic mathematical and logical concepts were true a priori or features of human psychology; a demonstrative project in the breadth of the a priori. But it is suggested that today’s theorists need not be as preoccupied with this distinction as Reinach was. Not only is the practical difference between ontological and evolutionary theories not as wide as Reinach seems to have assumed, but arguments for metaphysical reality in other domains are substantially less persuasive as applied to Reinach’s legal concepts.

This Introduction situates Reinach and the Foundations of Private Law, and Adolf Reinach, in contemporary currents in private law theory and philosophy.

This Introduction situates Reinach and the Foundations of Private Law, and Adolf Reinach, in contemporary currents in private law theory and philosophy.

This chapter critically examines the treatment of concepts of legal personality and representation provided by the great (if lamentably now mostly forgotten) German realist phenomenologist Adolf Reinach. In The A Priori Foundations of the Civil Law (1913), Reinach offers what is meant to be a phenomenological elucidation of the a priori nature (essential formal characteristics) of a wide variety of foundational legal concepts, the latter understood as denoting distinctive modalities of speech act. The primary interest of the chapter lies in the analysis that Reinach provides of concepts of personality and representation. However, one cannot understand what is distinctive in – and distinctively compelling or puzzling about – Reinach’s analysis of these concepts without appreciating what is distinctive about his general methodology of conceptual analysis (i.e., his phenomenological, speech act theoretical understanding of social behavior denoted by legal concepts). Thus, in addition to examining Reinach’s views on persons, legal personhood, and legal representation, the chapter provides a critical introduction to Reinachian conceptual analysis and explains its enduring interest for contemporary private law theory.

In this chapter, the focus is on negative states of affairs, on their corresponding judgments, and on the connection of these with Reinach’s jurisprudence – something that has not yet been done in the extant literature on him. The position advanced is that it is because the law frequently turns on what appears to be negative states of affairs; Reinach’s legal training may have contributed to his insistence on their very being and their having the same ontological status as positive states of affairs. Reinach was rather unique in the Munich and Göttingen phenomenological circles because he was a law student in addition to being a student of descriptive psychology and phenomenology; the ways he combined the various teachings from these fields opened up for him distinctive ways of seeing the world – in all its modes of being and not being. Consequences of the position include restoring these entities to their rightful place in his ontology (negative states of affairs have received far too little attention and serious inclusion in his work) and the potential for making Reinach whole again – by bridging his early law education with his phenomenological ontology.

Like Bombay and Calcutta later, Madras had an improbable start. Unprepossessing the site may have been, but by the time Francis Day resolved this was to be the first permanent settlement of the Company, he found receptive audiences in London and Bantam. Despite costs which troubled the court, work began immediately to fortify the town, and when population levels soared through the migration and settlement of native artisans and their families, it was surveyed, ordered, segregated and taxed. Importantly also, the experience of Madras threw into sharp relief the urgent need for a legitimacy grounded in jurisdictional power. Madras thus provided the means of addressing the manifold complexities associated with imposing a foreign administration of justice on a population which for the most part inhabited indigenous systems. The process was messy, pragmatic and incomplete, but by the early years of the eighteenth century, a court system was installed. Although based exclusively on an English model of municipal and legal reform, this was a system that helped to assert the sovereign authority of the Company and shaped the experiences of Bombay and Calcutta.

Law-making is not a straightforward process in international law. This chapter focuses on the various law-making processes and structures available for creating international law. It first considers the traditional sources of international law as set out in art 38(1) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice generally and the concept of hierarchy of norms and relative norms before considering each of the art 38(1) sources in turn. The chapter concludes by considering alternative sources of international law not covered by art 38(1): 'soft law' including that created by non-State actors, and the role of the UN in creating international law.