UC Irvine

This article explores an important as peel of peace movements· impact on international relations. It focuses in particular on the articulation and promotion of international legal norms by Anglo-American peace movements in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Social forces, in the form of peace movements, have, since the post-Napoleonic period, attempted with great energy and considerable success to influence norms underpinning international law. Norms promoted by these movements include constraints on stales' right to wage war and the requirement that slates attempt to resolve conflict' peacefully before using force, which over time have been embodied in treaties and agreements such as the Hague Conventions, the Covenant of the League of Nations, the 1928 Pact of Paris and the UN Charter. Additional norms promoted by peace movements include the constitutive principles or universalism (the notion that all political actors should participate in decisions about peace, security, and the improvement of international life) and equality of status (the notion that they should do so on an equal basis, and that rights should be granted to and obligations binding upon all) that provide the foundation for twentieth century global international organisations such as the League or Nations and the United Nations. Social movements have made these attempts as part of a much less successful endeavour to promote law as a means of ensuring international peace.