ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the relationships between the two universalist international organizations – the League of Nations (LON) and the United Nations (UN) – and regional arrangements in the Americas. It traces the evolution of different regionalist ideas in the western hemisphere, specifically contrasting the Monroe Doctrine, a unilateral regionalist conception of hemispheric unity under US stewardship, with the multilateral conceptions of Pan-Americanism ascribed to the Pan-American Union (PAU) and the Organization of American States (OAS). The chapter argues that the attempt to develop a regional legal order in the western hemisphere significantly influenced the drafting of the two universal organizations' Constitutional Treaties. It highlights the often neglected contribution of Pan-American regionalism to broader international law, particularly in a period during which international law was part of "the discursive creation of Latin America as well as a language for contesting its definition".
