The Paris Peace Conference convened on the 18th of January 1919, two months after the end of the First World War (1914-1918), and set the new legal order of that time. One of the results of the Conference was the establishment of the League of Nations with the aim to prevent war, maintain peace and develop international cooperation in the economic and political sphere. The League of Nations was officially inaugurated on the 10th of January 1920 in London. The headquarter was then moved to Geneva, where on the 15th November 1920 the first General Assembly took place at the Wilson Palace. The aim of the lecture is to show the establishment of the international mandates by the League of Nations in order to face up the problem of the jurisdiction over the former colonial territories of the defeated nations as Germany and the Ottoman Empire. It will be discussed the complex relation between law and violence, violence and international law and sovereignty and property, analysing also the General Act of the Berlin Conference of 1885.
Prof. Dr. Elisabetta Fiocchi Malaspina, Faculty of Law, University of Zurich