International Law and International Relations (original) (raw)

A perspective on international law

2021

This article explores the evolution and role of contemporary international law vis-a-vis international politics. It considers how these rules and norms regulate the conduct of states and other entities in their relations, internally and externally. The article discusses the polemics between different scholars on the nature of international law and its aspects to achieving peace, justice, prosperity, and freedom for all. There are those who consider international law as ineffective due to its failure in maintaining international peace or compelling states to comply. Nonetheless, it is well-accepted and important in order to attain balance and order in the management of society and international relations. Hence, it binds state and non-state actors to take efforts to avoid conflicts which can be devastating for peace, justice, and prosperity. However, the nature of the international system is such that it has not been able to dictate politics and behaviour of states. The dilemma of th...

INTERNATIONAL LAW AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: A PROBLEMATIC AND/OR A HARMONIOUS RELATIONSHIP?

Yearbook of the Faculty of Philosophy , 2018

The paper focuses on the relationship between International Law and International Relations, i.e. on their interconnectedness as a substantial issue both from a theoretical and practical point of view. The starting premise is that although they constitute distinct academic disciplines, the objects of their interest can hardly be analysed in isolation from each other. Even those who disagree with the thesis of their academic synergy, acknowledge that with no international law there could be no international relations; also, the practice of international politics is a ground that breeds international legal norms. In the analysis of this rather complex relationship, a special emphasis is placed on the need for deconstruction of the wide-spread myth that international law is by default ‘good’ (i.e. positive in a normative sense of the word), while the international politics is to be blamed for all the bad things that happen in the international arena. Instead, we make an attempt to shed some light on the most important strategic and moral limits of the international law, in order to induce a more critical viewpoint on the relations between power, politics and law in the international arena. The paper ends with some suggestions about the need for development of an innovative research agenda in elaboration of this relationship.

International Law and Its World - Syllabus

LLM Subject - 2015 - Los Andes University, Faculty of Law, Summer Course. Feel free to use it with due acknowledgment. About the Subject: This course will take you step by step through the fundamental elements of International Law, understood in its broadest sense to encompass public international law, private international and international economic law. It will provide you with a detailed understanding of the norms, doctrines and institutions of international law, giving you a relevant and rigorous language and set of techniques with which to analyse and assess world politics, world economics and world history. However, just as you will learn to bring international law to bear on politics, economics history, you will also be encouraged, at the same time, to reverse this relationship, bringing politics, economics and history to bear on international law, in order to think more critically about the discipline and its effects. Is international law always a force for good, or is it possible that international law might have contributed to the construction and sustenance of the very problems it is called upon to solve? In order to equip you with a doctrinal, normative and institutional understanding of international law, and with the tools to apply this knowledge critically, we will be paying special attention to the question of how the doctrine, norms and institutions of international law influence not only international relations but also our daily domestic life.

The Politics of International Law - 20 Years Later

European Journal of International Law, 2009

The essay examines some of the changes in my own thinking about the politics of engaging in international law since the original publication of the article that opened the fi rst issue of EJIL in 1990. The essay points to the change of focus from indeterminacy (to which I am as committed as ever) of legal arguments to the structural biases of international institutions. It then discusses the politics of defi nition, that is to say, the strategic practice of defi ning international situations and problems in new expert languages so as to gain control over them. It attacks the increasing ' managerialism ' in the fi eld and ends with a few refl ections about the signifi cance of the moment of the establishment of the Journal 20 years ago.

Introduction: The life of international law and its concepts

Concepts for International Law, 2019

47AM via free access sensibilities that remain prevalent in today's legal writings, while also bringing attention to the limits, nuances and fractures in these sensibilities. Here, we offer detailed readings, criticisms and extensions of texts by Jhering, Hohfeld, Ross, Cohen, Kennedy and Koskenniemi, to name but a few. We argue that these writings offer various and contrasting aesthetic, ethical and political insights into how we live with, apprehend, think of and know international law through its concepts. These insights tend to emerge with considerable strength when we look at the tensions and differences between sensibilities side by side. Finally, it is perhaps clear by now that we intend this introduction to be a standalone piece. Nevertheless, the third section is a brief introduction to the volume itself. It outlines how we chose the concepts that comprise this volume, the types of concepts contained herein, how authors approached their given task and how we see relations between the various concepts contained in the book and the many that lie beyond its limited purview.