Why we should see international law as a structure: Unpicking international law’s ontology and agency

Abstract

This article identifies how three dominant ideas of international law (as a process, an institution and a practice) see its agency, concluding that all three share a reluctance to see international law as doing anything more than enabling the operation of other actors, forces or structures. This article argues that we should see international law as a structure because it possesses both the surface structure of rules, principles, processes, personnel and material elements of the international legal system and a deep structure of values that sits deep within our subconscious. As Shklar’s idea of legalism shows us, legalism plays a powerful role in shaping all our understandings of ourselves and the world that surrounds us. Seeing international law as a structure enables us to see how it locates actors within a social hierarchy and how it behaves in similar ways to recognised structures like capitalism and racism.

The Realism of the American Political System in Achieving International Stability: The Middle East as a Model (2003-2020)

“…In the second half of the twentieth century, and light of the pluralistic perspective of international powers, the liberal school -that sought to frame international multilateral cooperation and its mechanisms-emerged in the face of the realist school that attached great importance to the military force and the interests of individual countries as a determinant of the factors governing international relations (Sinclair, 2020). The elements of military power were the foundation used by the United States of America in measuring and determining the level of power of both international and regional actors, especially in the Middle East.…”