Scholarship@WashULaw

Document Type

Book Review

Language

English (en)

Publication Date

2026

Publication Title

Voelkerrechtsblog

Abstract

This book review symposium comes at a moment of visible strain in the postwar legal order. As of this writing, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has described a "rupture" in the rules-based world order, warning that multilateral institutions and the architecture of collective problem-solving are under threat. Notably, Carney issued that warning at the World Economic Forum in Davos, before an audience of "companies and countries." The setting underscores a broader shift in global governance, in which states, firms, and philanthropic actors increasingly occupy shared institutional spaces, unsettling assumptions about law and power at the international level. The books under review-A Theory of International Organizations in Public International Law, by Orfeas Chasapis-Tassinis, and Ways of Seeing International Organisations, edited by Negar Mansouri & Daniel R. Quiroga-Villamarín-offer distinct ways of thinking about what international organizations (IOs) are and how international law decides which collective actors count as public authorities in this altered landscape. This essay first puts these works in conversation with my recent edited volume, States, Firms, and Their Legal Fictions, as invited by the symposium editors, to compare the lenses each use to rationalize human association through groups. Then I consider how these differing rationalities constitute international organizations as entities against the backdrop of a changing world order.

Keywords

International Organizations, Non-State Actors, Public Authority, Global Governance, Functionalism, Legal Personality, Social Practice, World Order, Customary International Law

Publication Citation

Melissa (MJ) Durkee, Seeing International Organizations in a Shifting Landscape: Law, Practice, and Authority, Voelkerrechtsblog  (forthcoming 2026)

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