Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the reissue
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Objectivity in international law: conventional dilemmas
- 2 Doctrinal history: the liberal doctrine of politics and its effect on international law
- 3 The structure of modern doctrines
- 4 Sovereignty
- 5 Sources
- 6 Custom
- 7 Variations of world order: the structure of international legal argument
- 8 Beyond objectivism
- Epilogue (2005)
- Bibliography and Table of cases
- Index
8 - Beyond objectivism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the reissue
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Objectivity in international law: conventional dilemmas
- 2 Doctrinal history: the liberal doctrine of politics and its effect on international law
- 3 The structure of modern doctrines
- 4 Sovereignty
- 5 Sources
- 6 Custom
- 7 Variations of world order: the structure of international legal argument
- 8 Beyond objectivism
- Epilogue (2005)
- Bibliography and Table of cases
- Index
Summary
The unfoundedness of objectivism
The structure of legal argument revisited
I started this book by the observation that international lawyers are like lawyers in general in believing that they can produce statements relating to the social world which are “objective” in some sense that political, ideological, religious or other such statements are not. I hastened to add that this did not signify any committal to naïve views about the automatic character of law-application. I tried to define objectivity as loosely as possible without detracting from the way in which international lawyers themselves think about the law and about the character of their statements about it. I did this by the twin criteria of concreteness and normativity and left these on purpose ambiguous so as to allow maximal coverage. By “concreteness” I meant that the law was to be verifiable, or justifiable, independently of what anyone might think that the law should be. By “normativity” I wanted to say that the law was to be applicable even against a State (or other legal subject) which opposed its application to itself.
Stated in such a fashion, I believe that the minimal conditions for objectivity are met. The identity of law vis-à-vis political opinions can be upheld only if both concreteness and normativity can be provided for. For if the law could be verified, or justified, only by reference to somebody's views about what the law should be like, it would have no distance from that person's political opinions.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- From Apology to UtopiaThe Structure of International Legal Argument, pp. 513 - 561Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006