Scientific Reason and the Discipline of International Law

Putting to Work the Uncanny: Historical Argument in International Economic Law

“…A chief target of ILPH is the Cambridge School or contextual approach to intellectual history, epitomised by Quentin Skinner and applied to the study of international law by acolytes such as Ian Hunter. 5 Such historians have accused legal scholars of indulging in anachronistic or politically motivated depictions of the past. Orford shows how the Cambridge School's conceit of empirical accuracy in the production of impartial histories has long been misinformed by caricatures of what lawyers really do.…”

Vicarius Christi: Extraterritoriality, pastoral power, and the critique of secular international law

“…229 5. Concluding remarks: Training the shepherds of humanity Much ink has been spilled on the birth of international law as a profession, 230 especially after Koskenniemi and Kennedy invited us to think of 'international law as what international lawyers do and how they think' 231 (and, most importantly, of the particular political projects they mobilize when they act and think 232 ). Usually, this process of disciplinary formation is told as a twin narrative of 'autonomization' (with the emancipation of international law from religion or politics) and 'scientification' (with the rise of legal positivism).…”

The Responsibility to Protect and the Responsibility While Protecting: An Analysis of Humanitarian Intervention and the Developing World

“…96 It is in this context that we should see Douzinas' suggestion that the radical and revolutionary potential of human rights is 'radically circumscribed when rights become an apology for state violence'. 97 The philosopher Jacques Rancière summarises the aforementioned critical approach by describing the right of humanitarian intervention as 'a sort of return to sender: the disused rights that had been sent to the rightless are sent back to the senders'. 98 This movement is founded on a discourse of absolute victims -object of an absolute evil (genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes) -and of an avenger, the bringer of infinite justice.…”