Since classical antiquity debates about tyranny, tyrannicide and preventing tyranny's re-emergence have permeated governance discourse. Yet within the literature on the global legal order, tyranny is missing. This book creates a taxonomy of tyranny and poses the question: could the global legal order be tyrannical? This taxonomy examines the benefits attached to tyrannical governance for the tyrant, considers how illegitimacy and fear establish tyranny, asks how rule by law, silence and beneficence aid in governing a tyranny. It outlines the modalities of tyranny: scale, imperialism, gender, and bureaucracy. Where it is determined that a tyranny exists, the book examines the extent of the right and duty to effect tyrannicide. As the global legal order gathers ever more power to itself, it becomes imperative to ask whether tyranny lurks at the global scale.

Tyranny is pervasive. This book examines historical and contemporary tyranny and explores its role in the global legal order.

About the Author
Aoife O'Donoghue is a Professor of International Law and Global Governance at Durham University Law School, UK. She publishes extensively on topics such as utopias and global constitutionalism, tyranny, feminism, the use of force alongside international legal history and theory, including her monograph Constitutionalism in Global Constitutionalisation (2014). She co-led the UN Gender Network, the highly successful Northern/Ireland Feminist Judgments Project, and Performing Identities, a project focusing on Brexit and Northern Ireland. She frequently comments in the media on the impact of Brexit on Ireland, and has undertaken extensively consultancy work for statutory human rights bodies.


Book Information
ISBN 9781108498845
Author Aoife O'Donoghue
Format Hardback
Page Count 224
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 540g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 158mm * 18mm