Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2025
This book addresses two interrelated problems regarding the legal nature of international organizations in public international law. The first problem concerns whether and why these institutions can be thought of as legally distinct from their members. The second problem pertains to the content of international organizations’ legal personality, meaning their capacities, rights, and obligations, assuming that they are legally distinct from their members. To address these two problems, this book embarks on a philosophical investigation of the nature of corporate existence itself. It argues that we cannot adequately theorize the existence of any corporate entity, including international organizations, without first making up our minds as to how and why the existence of its members is possible to begin with. Thus, this book revisits deeply entrenched doctrinal assumptions about international organizations as well as their members, including, most prominently, states. Rather than dwell on how international organizations may compare to or differ from their members, this book draws emphasis on the fact that all these entities represent potentialities of communal planning and organization. The outcome is a legal theory of ‘institutional genealogy’. I coin this term to signify that both international organizations and their members ultimately rise from the same root: the capacity of an organized community of human beings to self-describe.
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