Who or what is entitled to act on the international plane? Where should responsibility for violations of international law lie? What sort of entities are capable of possessing international legal rights? What is the status of individuals, minority groups, non-governmental bodies, international organisations and animals in the international legal order and how has their status shifted over time? International Legal Personality contains fourteen articles that address these and related questions. In historical and contemporary writings, international lawyers grapple with the nature of legal identity, and confront global distributions of authority and responsibility, as they explore who or what is a ''person'' in the international legal order. These essays document the emergence of an international legal order increasingly conceived in terms of patterns and probabilities, rather than as the stagecraft of a small company of permanent players.

Who or what is entitled to act on the international plane? Where should responsibility for violations of international law lie? What sort of entities are capable of possessing international legal rights? What is the status of individuals, minority groups, non-governmental bodies, international organisations and animals in the international legal order and how has their status shifted over time? International Legal Personality contains fourteen articles that address these and related questions. In historical and contemporary writings, international lawyers grapple with the nature of legal identity, and confront global distributions of authority and responsibility, as they explore who or what is a ''person'' in the international legal order. These essays document the emergence of an international legal order increasingly conceived in terms of patterns and probabilities, rather than as the stagecraft of a small company of permanent players.