The Turn to History in International Law (Oxford Bibliographies Online) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Engaging History in International Law
Skouteris, T. (2012), "Engaging History in International Law," in New Approaches to International Law: The European and American Experiences, (Jose Maria Beneyto & David Kennedy, Eds.), The Hague, Zuid Holland, The Netherlands: T.M.C. Asser Press, 99-121, 2012
This paper points to the intimate relationship between international legal writing and history. It typifies modes of engagement with history in international law in order to contrast, rather impressionistically, a traditional approach with a set of present-day critiques. It proposes that the distinction between professional historiography and legal work proper is in some way misleading: while there are significant differences in terms of their respective objectives and styles, legal work inevitably requires a positioned engagement with the past, thus producing (or contributing to the production of) historical knowledge (Sect. 4.2). Second, it argues that modern international law histories tend to share specific, albeit often unregistered, assumptions about the past that raise unsettling questions about the legitimacy of the axiomatic narratives of the discipline (Sect. 4.3). Third, it samples some alternative modes of engagement with history as evidenced in the ‘‘historical turn’’ and, in particular, in Critical histories of recent years (Sect. 4.4). The closing section identifies some starting points for reckoning with the role of history in international law work (Sect. 4.5).
Law as . . .': Theory and Practice in Legal History
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
2011] AFTERWORD 1041 influence of "law and" in their resort to synchronic analyses of relational conjunction and disjunction, to which they add diachrony in order to reveal the effect of law, or to explain its reality, by assessing change in its relation to other phenomena over time. Unsurprisingly, the animating hypotheses of twentiethcentury legal history embrace the same broad relational problematics that have preoccupied twentieth century "law and" theory: instrumentalism, relative autonomy, mutual constitutiveness, legal construction, autopoiesis, and indeterminacy. 10 The shift to "law as. . ." suggests something else, something distinctive. Concretely, it suggests that explanations of law are not to be found, either necessarily or sufficiently, in its relations to other things. As Shai Lavi notes, with justification, the shift affords an opportunity to think beyond long-familiar Weberian categories and trajectories. 11 It is not determinedly programmatic, a route to the next big concept, but open-ended (hence the ellipsis). Yet it would be idle to pretend that "law as. . ." takes no position, that it is not historically situated. Blithely unaware of it at the outset, the conveners of the conference where the essays here were first presented have discovered that we are on a path that others are also following. We find ourselves riding a wave, one reverberating in both legal 12 and historical 13 scholarship. The wave owes its existence to developments in both history and law. As to the latter, it has never been more of a "hypostatized construct" than at present. 14 We return to this observation below. 15 But what of the former? It, too, hypostatizes itself, though in a more limited sense, being a professional practice with less instrumental reach. Still, as a professional practice, contemporary history, like law, is full of talk of itself. History's talk is of what history has to offer the present. 16 One offering is the narrative history that has become something of a staple of literary nonfiction. Narrative history represents history as edifying stories of the past. As Gordon 10.
Legal history is having a methodological moment. So is law (and, as it turns out, history as well). And not just in one country or legal system but across the common law/civil law divide. In this chapter I try to capture some aspects of this methodological moment—or moments— and then to add some reflections of my own that locate legal history within the enterprise of legal scholarship. More specifically, I will outline an approach to legal history that regards historical analysis as one mode of critical analysis of law, along with other modes of " interdisciplinary " analysis (economical, philosophical, sociological, literary, etc.) and " doctrinal " analysis. In this way, legal history plays a key role in the general effort to move beyond the long-standing and rhetorically useful, but ultimately unproductive, distinction between " modern " and " traditional " legal scholarship, and that between " common law " and " civil law " scholarship besides.
International law and its histories:methodological risks and opportunities
Harvard International Law Journal, 2017
The history of international law has recently come to the forefront of legal debates. Defined as the field of study that examines the evolution of public international law investigating state practice, the development of given legal concepts and the life and work of its makers, the history of international law (HIL) or international legal history has attracted the growing attention of international lawyers and legal historians, as well as other interested audiences. Despite its flourishing, the history of international law is still in search of a proper methodology. Two cultures of writing history compete in its making: ‘historians’ histories’ and ‘jurists’ histories’. While legal historians are interested in the past for its own sake and put it in context, lawyers tend to be interested in the past for the light it throws on the present. Several questions arise in this context. Should one stick to intra-disciplinary approaches, or endorse a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary stanc...
The turn to the history of International Law in the discipline of International Relations
Cambridge History of International Law, Vol I, 2023
This chapter focuses on the recent (re)turn to history in International Relations (IR) scholarship on international law. We argue that two interrelated trends explain this development. The first is primarily internal to the field, where historically sensitive approaches have gained ground over the past thirty years. The second is external and the result of IR scholars' productive engagement with debates in other fields, including global history, intellectual history, and legal history. Although the new historical IR work on international law remains heavily indebted to histories produced outside the confines of the discipline, IR scholars at the vanguard of this movement are increasingly comfortable with writing histories themselves. New IR historical accounts have thus emerged, spanning broad subjects of international society, order, and transformation, as well as specific areas of international law, including human rights, humanitarian law, and international organizations. We review the history of the disciplinary divide between IR and legal history, outline how IR theoretical approaches have made use of history, highlight some of the thematic areas of the new IR historical work, and lay out possible future research directions.
Turntablism in the History of International Law
Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d’histoire du droit international, 2020
This article uses the metaphor of turntablism to shed light on the confinement of international lawyers’ engagement with history to the terms, vocabularies, and categories of the very historical narratives they seek to evaluate, disrupt, or displace. For the sake of this article, turntablism is understood here as the art of creating new music and sound effects by using one or several turntables on which a record is placed. This article argues that twenty-first century international lawyers engaging with the history of international law are talented turntablists in that the many historiographical works of international lawyers produced since the so-called ‘historical turn’ have remained confined to the very terms, categories, and vocabularies of the histories whose creation they have been discoursing and theorising. This article ultimately shows that turntablism is not the inevitable fate of international lawyers engaging with history, and that a radical historical critique is possib...
Time, History and International Law
Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d'histoire du droit international, 2009
In an article written in the second volume of the American Journal of International Law in 1908, Lassa Oppenheim was to reflect upon the various tasks that he believed needed to be undertaken in the development of the 'science of international law', 1 foremost amongst which was the 'exposition of existing recognized rules of international law'. 2 He was to maintain, however, that in order to satisfactorily fulfil that task, scholars necessarily had to have 'a knowledge of the history of the rules concerned'. 3 But on this score there was much to be done: '[I]n spite of the vast importance of this task it has as yet hardly been undertaken; the history of international law is certainly the most neglected province of it. Apart from a few points which are dealt with in monographs, the history of international law is virgin land which awaits its cultivators. Whatever may be the merits of the histories and historical sketches which we possess, they are in the main mere compilations. The master-historian of international law has still to come.' 4 The main task, as he saw it, of the 'expected master-builder' was the elaboration of a history of dogmatics ('Dogmengeschichte') the purpose of which would be to explain from where each rule of international law originated, how it developed and how it gradually became recognized in practice. This was, however, only part of the picture as the history of dogmatics would merely supply the 'building materials' of a broader 'history of international law' understood as a 'branch of the history of Western cilivization'. The historian of international law would also be expected to recount the 'ultimate victory of international law over international anarchy' and 'bring to light the part certain states have played in the victorious development of certain rules'. In the process they would have to expose 'the economic, political, humanitarian, religious, and other interests which have helped to establish the present rules of international law.' 5 The task, in other words, would be both celebratory and instructive, it would not only stand as testament to what had come about (the disciplining of politics through law), but also provide a means whereby international lawyers could work with more precision and knowledge, and with a clearer sense of their social role. It would involve both an
Cambridge History of International Law
This chapter focuses on the recent (re)turn to history in International Relations (IR) scholarship on international law. We argue that two interrelated trends explain this development. The first is primarily internal to the field, where historically sensitive approaches have gained ground over the past thirty years. The second is external and the result of IR scholars' productive engagement with debates in other fields, including global history, intellectual history, and legal history. Although the new historical IR work on international law remains heavily indebted to histories produced outside the confines of the discipline, IR scholars at the vanguard of this movement are increasingly comfortable with writing histories themselves. New IR historical accounts have thus emerged, spanning broad subjects of international society, order, and transformation, as well as specific areas of international law, including human rights, humanitarian law, and international organizations. We review the history of the disciplinary divide between IR and legal history, outline how IR theoretical approaches have made use of history, highlight some of the thematic areas of the new IR historical work, and lay out possible future research directions.