Is International Law International? Exploring Its Normative Underpinnings (original) (raw)
Related papers
Moscow Journal of International Law, 2020
INTRODUCTION. Occasionally a book appears which has a significant impact on the scholarly community. A fine example of this is the work considered here by the Australian international lawyer, Anthea Roberts. Until very recently, comparative studies on international law were rare. However, as international law further develops and widens, so special attention will need to be paid to ensure that international law students are, to a greater extent, taught the same material and in the same way. As municipal systems of law became more mature, so doctrine and jurisprudence began to diverge. International law has now entered such a phase in its development and, in this excellent book, Dr. Roberts asks a series of very important questions: exactly what is taking place, what are the factors that are driving these processes, is such to be welcomed, is it unstoppable and where do we go from here?MATERIALS AND METHODS. The article reflects on Anthea Roberts’ book “Is International Law Internati...
Is International Law International?
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2017
Is International Law International? takes the reader on a sweeping tour of the international legal academy to reveal some of the patterns of difference, dominance, and disruption that belie international law’s claim to universality. Both revealing and challenging, confronting and engaging, this book is a must-read for any international lawyer, particularly in a world of shifting geopolitical power. Pulling back the curtain on the “divisible college of international lawyers,” the author shows how international lawyers in different states, regions, and geopolitical groupings are often subject to differences in their incoming influences and outgoing spheres of influence in ways that affect how they understand and approach international law, including with respect to contemporary controversies like Crimea and the South China Sea. Using case studies and visual representations, the author demonstrates how actors and materials from some states and groups have come to dominate certain trans...
Examining (international) law: towards a systematic, coherent and radical theory
2012
This formal statocentrism is, of course, not without its exceptions and contestations. International Humanitarian Law, for example, can be said to ascribe rights to individuals, while International Criminal Law attributes responsibility to them. However, according to orthodox accounts, the state is still the key actor in the field, either because instances of individual rights and responsibilities are highly specific to a particular issue or situation, or because the treaties and rules of customary law which confer individual rights/responsibilities (and upon which such rights/responsibilities are dependent) are made by, and bind, only nation-states. For a more detailed discussion of this particular issue, see
International Law as Glocal Law
Perceptions of the role of international law vary considerably. Beyond diverse and historical debates about enforceability, interpretation, and scope, the analysis aims specifically at a perception of international law as the conveyer of a type of law that is legitimately concerned with pluralism.
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.
Academics, practitioners and international and national courts are increasingly seeking to identify and interpret international law by engaging in comparative analyses of various domestic court decisions. This emerging phenomenon, which I term 'comparative international law', loosely fuses international law (as a matter of substance) with comparative law (as a matter of process). However, this comparative process is seriously complicated by the ambiguous role that national court decisions play in the international law doctrine of sources, under which they provide evidence of the practice of the forum State as well as being a subsidiary means for determining international law. This article analyses these dual, and sometimes conflicting, roles of national courts and the impact of this duality on the comparative international law process.
To Do Away with International Law? Some Limits to 'The Limits of International Law
European Journal of International Law, 2006
Different methodological approaches to international law abound. Recently the rationalist, game-theoretical approach in the law and economics tradition has gained much prominence, certainly so in the United States. Within this tradition the volume by Professors Goldsmith and Posner purports to set a milestone by providing a comprehensive explanatory theory of international law with normative lessons in order to put international law and its scholarship on a more solid foundation. In principle, the combination of careful doctrinal description and consequentialist social science theory is to be welcomed. The way in which the authors pursue that goal is, however, questionable. They sometimes show a biased understanding of rationality, use only basic game theory, and give ad hoc explanations and examples, failing to account for more recent developments in international law. Not pursuing international law and economics any further, however, would amount to throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Instead, more sophisticated, constructive and thoughtful rationalist approaches to international law ought to be further developed. Even though the Goldsmith-Posner critique of international law scholarship is an opportunity to critically reflect on some of international law's institutional and conceptual limitations, 'The Limits of International Law' have not yet been reached.
An Introduction to International Law, Thomson Reuters, 2021
This chapter introduces the concept and need of public international law, with some of the definitions of international law. It contains a brief introduction to the nature of international law and touches upon the significance of international politics in international law. It also introduces the reader to the commonalities and differences between international and national legal systems. It discusses the issue of international law in an unequal international society and reflects how the statecentric approach affects the realms of international law. It further brings out an interesting case of Social Contract Theory in International Law, whereby the need for international law is pressed with the Social contractarian arguments. The chapter towards the end briefly outlines a comparative sketch between public international law and private international law.