Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-wtssw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-15T23:36:02.854Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

International Law and Social Science: A Mild Plea in Avoidance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2017

Extract

It may appear ungracious to respond questioningly to an appraisal so extensive and generous as that offered by Professor Young. The intellectual issues his statement raises transcend, however, ordinary considerations of reciprocal graciousness and generosity: innocent bystanders might be confused and misled. Professor Young purports to criticize our recommended policy-oriented jurisprudence without making explicit his own jurisprudence or the premises and assumptions which underlie his criticisms. Many of the difficulties and obscurities he finds in our work would appear to derive either from the inherent difficulties of inquiry and decision or from obscurities and incomplete notions in his own framework of inquiry. His conceptions, in particular, of “law,” “international law,” “world public order,” “values and norms,” “jurisprudence,” and “social science” are less than clear. We briefly illustrate

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1972

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 W. W. Buckland describes the “Law of Citations” as follows:

“Under the provisions of this statute (i) all writings of Papinian, Paul, Ulpian, Modestinus and Gaius were confirmed and might be cited, Gaius to have the same authority as the others, (ii) any writer cited and approved by any of the five (Scaevola, Sabinus, Julian and Marcellus are named as examples) might himself be cited, provided comparison of MSS. shewed the citation to be accurate, and (iii) the iudex must adopt the view of the majority: in case of equality, Papinian must be followed, but if he was silent the iudex might form his own judgment.” A Manual of Roman Private Law 20 (2d ed., 1957).

Elsewhere he adds: “These provisions shew that scientific study of law was a thing of the past: they mark probably the lowest point reached by Roman jurisprudence.” A Textbook of Roman Law 35 (1921).

2 Some of the more relevant perspectives are outlined in Professor Young’s books, A Systematic Approach to International Politics (1968) and Systems of Political Science (1968). For a more detailed discussion of many of the issues raised in Professor Young’s paper, with appropriate citation of his books, see Lasswell, and McDougal, , “Criteria for a Theory About Law,” 44 So. Calif. Law Rev. 362 (1971)Google Scholar.

Perhaps it should be added that the editorial “we” I have employed in writing this response is intended to refer not simply to one or two persons but to a larger group of associates who share certain perspectives and are making varying individual contributions to the further development of these perspectives.