The Asian Society of International Law: Its Birth and Significance

The establishment of the Asian Society of International Law (hereinafter “the Society”) may be characterized as symbolizing a fundamental change in history: the transformation from the West-centric world of the twentieth century to the multipolar and multi-civilizational world of the twenty-first. The Society’s establishment suggests the urgent need for those living in this multipolar world—international lawyers in particular—to enhance their ability to appreciate this changing reality and the normative responses to it. The Society could also be an important forum for achieving these aims. Global society in the twentieth century was dominated by “Western” powers. In the field of international law, it was mainly the governments, media institutions, leaders, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), experts, and international lawyers of the Western nations that constructed, interpreted, maintained, and implemented the international legal order. For a long time, it was the major Western universities and the American Society of International Law (ASIL) that played a leading role in the field of the academic and professional activities of international law. From around the end of the twentieth century, it became evident that Asian nations had again risen in the global arena. Japan took the lead and has remained the world’s second-largest economy since the late 1970s. Yet it is the resurgence of China and India as world powers that is of fundamental importance from the perspective of human history.