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
Preface to the reissue
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
This book was first published at a moment of enthusiasm about the spread of international cooperation and the rule of law in the world. Its central thesis – namely that international law reproduces the paradoxes and ambivalences of a liberal theory of politics – may have seemed awkward at a time when liberalism was just about to gain a knock-out victory over its alternatives. Little is left today of that enthusiasm. International institutions, multilateral diplomacy and indeed international law are widely seen to have failed to cope with the most pressing international problems. Instead, “liberalism” is now often associated with the expansion of a private, market-driven “globalization” or the spread of a rhetoric of “freedom” that instrumentalizes law for the advancement of particular values or interests. Examined from the outside, international law appears sidelined by the informal structures of private governance while, from the inside, its functional differentiation (“fragmentation”) has raised the question of whether any unifying centre remains in public international law that would still seem worthy of professional or ideological commitment.
And yet, the supple fabric of liberalism accounts for the persistent attraction of liberal themes. The virtues of sovereignty remain as palpable as its vices. The ideal of a consensually based legal order between equal and self-determining collectivities has retained its political appeal despite the theoretical, doctrinal and practical problems with the ideas of consent, self-determination and inter-state equality.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- From Apology to UtopiaThe Structure of International Legal Argument, pp. xiii - xivPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
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