International Law As Social Construct

This book distills and articulates international law as a social construct. It does so by analyzing its social foundations, essence, and roots in practical and socially workable (as opposed to 'pure') reason. In addition to well-known doctrines of jurisprudence and international law, it draws upon psycho-analytic insights into the origins and nature of law, as well as philosophical social constructivism. The work suggests that seeing law as a social construct is crucial to our understanding of international law and to the struggle to create better working rules.

The book distils and articulates international law as a social construct. It does so by analysing its social foundations, essence, and roots in practical and socially workable (as opposed to 'pure') reason. In addition to well-known doctrines of jurisprudence and international law, it draws upon psycho-analytic insights into the origins and nature of law, as well as philosophical social constructivism. The work suggests that seeing law as a social construct is crucial to our understanding of international law and to the struggle to create better working rules. The book re-conceptualizes both past and new doctrines of international law as 'constructs', namely, as strategies of concomitantly de-mythologizing and re-mythologizing international law. Key areas of international law, including subjects, sources, hierarchy, values, and remedies, are shown to be part of this process. The social impact on international law of transnational actors and stakeholders, normative fragmentation, global justice, legitimacy of both rules and players, dynamics and hierarchization of norms, compliance and implementation in municipal law is also extensively investigated. Five basic values of the international community, namely security, humanity, wealth, environment, and knowledge, are explored by stressing their inter- and intra-tensions. Finally, the analysis is extended to the role that international courts play in the prosecution of heads of state and other transnational players who violate international law.

This book explores international law as a social construct by analysing its social foundations and by re-conceptualizing the way in which it is commonly understood. It asks what law is and how it works in society, and shows why it is worth to struggle for new and better-working rules in the international legal order.

This illuminating book explores the theme of social constructionism in legal theory. It questions just how much freedom and power social groups really have to construct and reconstruct law.

Can international law regulate warfare? Experiences of US bombing suggests it does not solve the twenty-first-century belligerent's legitimacy dilemma.

A bridge is constructed by this volume between the separate professions and disciplines of international lawyers and social scientists. The authors attempt to restate international law, both its jurisprudence and its rules, in social science terms. The authors then explicitly set forth the reciprocal relationships between international law and the findings, perspectives, and literature of the social sciences—showing how the insights and concepts of political science, sociology, psychology, and other disciplines can illuminate the field of international law. The limits as well as utility of social science materials in the comprehension, teaching, and practice of international law are evaluated. Originally published in 1970. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The objective of this work is to restate the requirements of democratic legitimacy in terms of the deliberative ideal developed by Jürgen Habermas, and apply the understanding to the systems of global governance. The idea of democracy requires that the people decide, through democratic procedures, all policy issues that are politically decidable. But the state is not a voluntary association of free and equal citizens; it is a construct of international law, and subject to international law norms. Political self-determination takes places within a framework established by domestic and international public law. A compensatory form of democratic legitimacy for inter-state norms can be established through deliberative forms of diplomacy and a requirement of consent to international law norms, but the decline of the Westphalian political settlement means that the two-track model of democratic self-determination is no longer sufficient to explain the legitimacy and authority of law. The emergence of non-state sites for the production of global norms that regulate social, economic and political life within the state requires an evaluation of the concept of (international) law and the (legitimate) authority of non-state actors. Given that states retain a monopoly on the coercive enforcement of law and the primary responsibility for the guarantee of the public and private autonomy of citizens, the legitimacy and authority of the laws that regulate the conditions of social life should be evaluated by each democratic state. The construction of a multiverse of democratic visions of global governance by democratic states will have the practical consequence of democratising the international law order, providing democratic legitimacy for international law.

This book explores the close, complex and consequential – yet to a large extent implicit – relationship between international law and time. There is a conspicuous discrepancy between international law’s technical preoccupation with the mechanics of temporal rules and the absence of more foundational considerations of how time – both as an irrepressible physical dimension manifesting in the passage of time, and as a social construct shaped by diverse social and cultural factors – impacts and interacts with international law. Divided into five parts and 21 chapters, this book explores key aspects of the relationship between international law and time and puts the spotlight on time’s fundamental significance for international law as a legal order and as a discipline. Pursuing diverse approaches to international law, the authors consider the notion, significance, manifestations, uses and implications of time in international law in a wide range of contexts, and offer insights into the various ways in which international law and international lawyers cope with time, both in terms of constructing narratives and in devising and employing particular legal techniques.