"The chapters of this volume were presented at the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth Sokol Colloquia on Private International Law, held at the University of Virginia School of Law in September 2014 and November 2015"--Page xi.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Conceptualizing comparative international law / Anthea Roberts, Paul Stephan, Pierre-Hugues Verdier & Mila Versteeg -- Methodological guidance : how to select and develop comparative international law case studies / Katerina Linos -- Comparative international law, foreign relations law and fragmentation : can the center hold? / Paul B. Stephan -- Why comparative international law needs international relations theory / Daniel Abebe -- The many fields of (German) international law / Nico Krisch -- Crimea and the South China Sea : connections and disconnects among Chinese, Russian, and western international lawyers / Anthea Roberts -- "Shioki (control)," "fuyo (dependency)," and sovereignty : the status of the Ryukyu kingdom in early-modern and modern times / Masaharu Yanagihara -- Comparative international law within, not against, international law : lessons from the international law commission / Mathias Forteau -- The continuing impact of French legal culture on the International Court of Justice / Mathilde Cohen -- International law in national legal systems: an empirical investigation / Pierre-Hugues Verdier & Mila Versteeg -- Objections to treaty reservations : a comparative approach to decentralized interpretation / Tom Ginsburg -- Intelligence communities and international law : a comparative approach / Ashley S. Deeks -- National legislatures : the foundations of comparative international law / Kevin L. Cope & Hooman Movassagh -- International law in Chinese courts during the rise of China / Congyan Cai -- The democratizing force of international law : human rights adjudication by the Indian Supreme Court / Neha Jain -- Case law in Russian approaches to international law : sovereign cautiousness of a semi-peripheral great power / Lauri M�alksoo -- Doing away with capital punishment in Russia : international law and the pursuit of domestic constitutional goals / Bakhtiyar Tuzmukhamedov -- Comparative views on the right to vote in international law : the case of prisoners' disenfranchisement / Shai Dothan -- When law migrates : refugees in comparative international law / Jill I. Goldenziel -- An asymmetric comparative international law approach to treaty interpretation : the CEDAW committee's tolerance of the Scandinavian states' progressive deviation / Alec Knight -- Comparative international law and human rights : a value-added approach / Christopher McCrudden -- CEDAW in national courts: a case study in operationalizing comparative international -- Law analysis in a human rights context / Christopher McCrudden -- The great promise of comparative public law for Latin America : towards ius commune americanum? / Alejandro Rodiles -- Who cares about regulatory space in bits? : a comparative international approach / Tomer Broude, Yoram Z. Haftel & Alexander Thompson -- Africa and the rethinking of international investment law : about the elaboration of the Pan-African Investment Code / Makane Mo�ise Mbengue & Stefanie Schacherer -- Not so treacherous waters of international maritime law : Islamic law states and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea / Emilia Justyna Powell.

"By definition, international law, once agreed upon and consented to, applies to all parties equally. It is perhaps the one area of law where cross-country comparison seems inappropriate, because all parties are governed by the same rules. However, as this book explains, states sometimes adhere to similar, and at other times, adopt different interpretations of the same international norms and standards. International legal rules are not a monolithic whole, but are the basis for ongoing contestation in which states set forth competing interpretations. International norms are interpreted and redefined by national executives, legislatures, and judiciaries. These varying and evolving interpretations can, in turn, change and impact the international rules themselves. These similarities and differences make for an important, but thus far, largely unexamined object of comparison. This is the premise for this book, and for what the editors call "comparative international law""