Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Description without apology? On structures, signs and subjectivity in international legal scholarship

  • Article
  • Published:
Indian Journal of International Law

Abstract

In this examination of the state of the art in the methodology of international legal scholarship, attention is focused on the role of explanation and of description. Explanatory claims couched in terms of structure, of signs and of ‘the Other’, and of individual subjectivity, are interrogated. In contemporary international jurisprudence explanations in terms of structure, sign and subjectivity are typically applied eclectically and in amalgamation with sociological and historical explanations. Questionable claims are made concerning the revelation of hidden truths and speculative narratives of origins and development. Koskenniemi’s contribution to these debates is not so much a structuralist exercise revelatory of deep processes, but rather a strategic deployment of rhetorical technique. Ways forward include attending to Orford’s advocacy of description as against explanation in international legal scholarship.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Martti Koskenniemi, What is Critical Research in International Law? Celebrating Structuralism, 29 Leiden J Intl L (2016) 727; Anne Orford, International Law and the Limits of History, in W Werner, M de Hoon and A Galán (eds) The Law of International Lawyers: Reading Martti Koskenniemi (CUP, Cambridge, 2017) 297; Valentina Vadi, Perspective and Scale in the Architecture of International Legal History, 30 European J Intl L (2019) 53.

  2. Philippe Sands, East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2016); location and spatial methodologies are examined by L Eslava, Local Space, Global Life: The Everyday Operation of International Law and Development (CUP, Cambridge, 2015).

  3. J Desautels-Stein, International Legal Structuralism: A Primer, 8 Intl Theory (2016) 201; A Orford, On International Legal Method, 1 London Rev Intl L (2013) 166; S Pahuja, Changing the World: The Ethical Impulse and International Law, in R Gaita and G Simpson (eds) Who’s Afraid of International Law? (Monash Univ Publishing, Melbourne, 2017) 21; Sahib Singh, Koskenniemi’s Images of the International Lawyer, 29 Leiden J Intl L (2016) 699; I Tallgren, The Voice of the International: Who Is Speaking?, 13 J Intl Criminal Justice (2015) 135.

  4. A Orford and F Hoffmann, Introduction: Theorizing International Law, in, Orford and Hoffmann (eds) The Oxford Handbook of the Theory of International Law (OUP, Oxford, 2016) 2.

  5. E Posner, Martti Koskenniemi on Human Rights: An Empirical Perspective, in, W Werner, M de Hoon & A Galán (eds), supra note 1 at 121, 134.

  6. Frédéric Mégret, International Law as Law, in, J Crawford and M Koskenniemi (eds) The Cambridge Companion to International Law (CUP, Cambridge, 2012) 64, 76.

  7. M Koskenniemi, Epilogue: To Enable and Enchant – on the Power of Law, in, Werner, de Hoon & Galán (eds), supra note 1  at 393, 407; G Simpson, On Being Afraid of International Law, in, R Gaita and G Simpson (eds), supra note 3 at 10; Philip Allott, Beyond War and Diplomacy: A Giant Step for Mankind, 60 German Yrbk Intl L (2017) 276.

  8. M Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870—1960 (CUP, Cambridge, 2001) 501.

  9. Ibid 514.

  10. Thus Grotius’ writings on the laws of prize and booty at sea, advocating for free access to the high seas for merchant craft, were commissioned by the directors of the Dutch East India Company, even if those writings were never used by the Amsterdam Admiralty Board in deciding on the legality of their seizure of the Portuguese Santa Catarina: José-Manuel Barreto, Cerberus: Rethinking Grotius and the Westphalian System, in M Koskenniemi, W Rech and M J Fonseca (eds) International Law and Empire: Historical Explorations (OUP, Oxford, 2017) 149, 154; Arthur Weststeijn, Provincializing Grotius, ibid, 21, 24.

  11. Evan Criddle and Evan Fox-Decent, Fiduciaries of Humanity: How International Law Constitutes Authority (OUP, Oxford, 2016).

  12. See, Steven Ratner, The Thin Justice of International Law: A Moral Reckoning of the Law of Nations (OUP, Oxford, 2015).

  13. Jan Klabbers, Possible Islands of Predictability: The Legal Thought of Hannah Arendt, 20 Leiden J Intl L (2007) 1; A Orford, A Jurisprudence of the Limit, in Orford (ed) International Law and its Others (CUP, Cambridge, 2006) 1, 6 (on Derrida); Jean d’Aspremont, Towards a New Theory of Sources in International Law, in Orford & Hoffmann, supra note 4, 545, 560 (on Fish); Tanja Aalberts and Ben Golder, On the Uses of Foucault for International Law, 25 Leiden J Intl L (2012) 603; E Voyiakis, International Law, Interpretative Fidelity and the Hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, 54 German Yrbk Intl L (2011) 385; Janne Nijman, Paul Ricoeur and International Law: Beyond “The End of the Subject”. Towards a Reconceptualization of International Legal Personality, 20 Leiden J Intl L (2007) 25; Ino Augsberg, Carl Schmitt’s Fear: Nomos – Norm – Network, 23 Leiden J Intl L (2010) 741; Maria Aristodemou, A Constant Craving for Fresh Brains and a Taste for Decaffeinated Neighbours, 25 European J Intl L (2014) 35, 35 (on Lacan); 52 (on Zizek).

  14. A Orford, ‘In Praise of Description’ 25 Leiden J Intl L (2012) 609.

  15. M Koskenniemi, From Apology to Utopia: The Structure of International Legal Argument (CUP, Cambridge, 2005) 589; emphasis in original. Still less was Koskenniemi seeking to ‘instruct the profession about what has to be done’: Andrea Bianchi, International Law Theories: An Inquiry into Different Ways of Thinking (OUP, Oxford, 2016) 167.

  16. Orford, supra note 14, 617; on Wittgenstein see Jean d’Aspremont, Formalism and the Sources of International Law: A Theory of the Ascertainment of Legal Rules (OUP, Oxford, 2011) 198.

  17. G. Anscombe (trns) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1974), Remark 109, 47e; cited by Orford (2012) 618; emphasis in original.

  18. Koskenniemi, supra note 7, 398.

  19. François Dosse, History of Structuralism, Vol. 1: The Rising Sign, 1945—1966 (Univ Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1997) 275.

  20. Geoff Gordon, Natural Law in International Legal Theory, in Orford & Hoffmann, supra note 4, 279, 299.

  21. Frédéric Mégret, Theorizing the Laws of War, in Orford & Hoffmann, supra note 4, 762, 773.

  22. Orford, supra note 14, 617.

  23. Koskenniemi’s ‘methodological transparency’ with respect to a structuralist method should therefore be re-evaluated: Sahib Singh, International Legal Positivism and New Approaches to International Law, in Jörg Kammerhofer and Jean d’Aspremont (eds), International Legal Positivism in a Postmodern World (CUP, Cambridge, 2014) 291, 298.

  24. Koskenniemi, supra note 15, 606, 607; emphasis in original.

  25. Jean d’Aspremont, Martti Koskenniemi, the Mainstream, and Self-Reflection, 29 Leiden J Intl L (2016) 625, 631.

  26. Koskenniemi, supra note 15, 544.

  27. Ibid 66.

  28. Singh, supra note 23, 291, 298.

  29. This adoption of vocabulary might be said to reflect a more general assimilation of Koskenniemi: d’Aspremont, supra note 25.

  30. Peter Goodrich, The International Signs Law, in Orford & Hoffmann, supra note 4, 365.

  31. Horatia Muir Watt, A Semiotics of Private International Legal Argument, 14 Yrbk Private Intl L (2012/2013) 51.

  32. Aristodemou, supra note 13, 36; also see Matthew Nicholson, ‘Psychoanalyzing International Law(yers)’ 18 German L J (2017) 441.

  33. Anne Orford (ed) International Law and its Others (CUP, Cambridge, 2006).

  34. On ‘the structural relationship between law and capitalism,’ see, R Knox, Marxist Approaches to International Law, in Orford & Hoffmann, supra note 4, 306, 326; also see Florian Hoffmann, International Legalism and International Politics, in Orford & Hoffmann, supra note 4, 954, 959; Orford and Hoffmann, supra note 4, 15.

  35. A Fischer, The End of Peripheries? On the Enduring Relevance of Structuralism for Understanding Contemporary Global Development, 46 Development and Change (2015) 700, 701.

  36. J Beckett, Creating Poverty, in Orford & Hoffmann, supra note 4, 985, 999.

  37. Elisabeth Schweiger, Listen Closely: What Silence can Tell us about Legal Knowledge Production, 6 London Rev Intl L (2019) [2].

  38. Hoffmann, supra note 34, 959, 960.

  39. Anne Orford, Theorizing Free Trade, in Orford & Hoffmann, supra note 4, 701, 711; similarly, Goodrich has a ‘shift from a spectacular and distant mode of sovereign rule to a more subtle and pervasive oeconomic rule’ Goodrich, supra note 30, 382.

  40. Koskenniemi, supra note 8, 3. Structure in this sense may be thought of as quintessential ‘macro-history’: Vadi, supra note 1, 62. Periodization of history is persistently problematic: Ibid 6; William Butler, ‘Periodization and International Law’, in A Orakhelashvili (ed) Research Handbook on the Theory and History of International Law (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2011) 379.

  41. Jörg Kammerhofer, International Legal Positivism, in Orford & Hoffmann, supra note 4, 407, 410.

  42. For von Bernstorff, ‘[contextual] deep structure’ here refers to ‘the inner connection between Kelsen’s legal methodology and [his] cosmopolitan project’: Jochen von Bernstorff, Hans Kelsen and the Return of Universalism, in Orford & Hoffmann, supra note 4, 192, 194.

  43. James Williams, A Process Philosophy of Signs (Edinburgh Univ Press, Edinburgh, 2016) 183.

  44. Dosse, supra note 19, 43.

  45. Ibid 10.

  46. Ibid 21.

  47. Ibid 29.

  48. Ibid 28.

  49. Jean d’Aspremont, International Law as a Belief System (CUP, Cambridge, 2018) 26.

  50. Jaye Ellis, Form Meets Function: The Culture of Formalism and International Environmental Regimes, in, Werner, de Hoon and Galán (eds) supra note 1, at 93, 94.

  51. Singh, supra note 3.

  52. Dosse, supra note 19, 3.

  53. François Dosse, History of Structuralism Vol. 2: The Sign Sets, 1967—Present (Univ Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1997) 450; See, Prabhakar Singh, Spinning Yarns From Moonbeams: A Jurisprudence of Statutory Interpretation in Common Law, 41 Statute L Rev (2019), section 2 on structuralism, phenomenology and law.

  54. James Williams, Understanding Poststructuralism (Acumen, 2005) 105.

  55. Lechte includes Chomsky within ‘Structuralism’: John Lechte, Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers: From Structuralism to Postmodernity (Routledge, London, 1994); Koskenniemi includes Chomsky’s linguistics in the context of structuralism, Koskenniemi, (2005) 8.

  56. D’Aspremont, supra note 16, 110.

  57. Koskenniemi, supra note 15, 6.

  58. Dosse, supra note 19.

  59. Padraig McAuliffe, Transformative Transitional Justice and the Malleability of Post-Conflict States (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2017) 17.

  60. Jean d’Aspremont, Towards a New Theory of Sources in International Law, in Orford & Hoffmann, supra note 4, 545, 556; A Bianchi, D Peat and M Windsor (eds) Interpretation in International Law (CUP, Cambridge, 2015).

  61. Williams, supra note 54, 55.

  62. Koskenniemi, supra note 15, 563.

  63. Ibid 617.

  64. Ibid 563.

  65. Ibid.

  66. Koskenniemi (2001) 1.

  67. Koskenniemi (2005) 617.

  68. Koskenniemi (2001) 7; 5.

  69. Ibid 1.

  70. Sahib Singh, The Critic(-al Subject), in, Werner, de Hoon and Galán (eds)  supra note 1 at 197, 200.

  71. Koskenniemi, supra note 15, 567.

  72. Ibid 565; emphasis added.

  73. Ibid 8; thus ‘what international law [is] about’ is ‘examined from the inside of the profession,’ ibid 565; emphasis in original.

  74. Ibid 565.

  75. Ibid 598; 597.

  76. Ibid 567; emphasis in original.

  77. Ibid 573.

  78. Ibid 566.

  79. Ibid 571.

  80. Ibid 589.

  81. Ibid 584.

  82. Ibid 617, where ‘elsewhere’ refers to Koskenniemi, supra note 8. The apparent voluntarism of Koskenniemi’s account is criticised by Jutta Brunnée and Stephen Toope, The Rule of Law in an Agnostic World: The Prohibition on the Use of Force and Humanitarian Exceptions, in, Werner, de Hoon and Galán (eds) supra note 1 at 137, 144.

  83. Koskenniemi, supra note 15, 548; emphasis in original.

  84. Ibid 541.

  85. Singh, supra note 23, 300.

  86. Dosse, supra note 19, 21.

  87. Koskenniemi, supra note 15, 565; emphasis in original.

  88. Hoffmann, supra note 34, 980.

  89. T Skouteris, The Notion of Progress in International Law Discourse (Asser Press, The Hague, 2010).

  90. Koskenniemi, supra note 15, 41.

  91. As paraphrased by Carl Sunstein, Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict (OUP, Oxford, 1996) 188-9.

  92. Koskenniemi, supra note 15, 59.

  93. Ibid.

  94. Ibid 67.

  95. Ibid 60.

  96. Ibid 67.

  97. Augsberg, supra note 13.

  98. Thomas Skouteris, ‘The Idea of Progress’ in Orford & Hoffmann, supra note 4, 939, 946.

  99. Mégret, supra note 21, 773.

  100. Jan Klabbers, The Transformation of International Organizations Law: A Rejoinder, 26 European J Intl L (2016) 975.

  101. Muir Watt, supra note 31; Horatia Muir Watt, Theorizing Private International Law, in Orford & Hoffmann, supra note 4, 866.

  102. Watt, supra note 31, 56.

  103. Ibid 60.

  104. Ibid 57.

  105. Ibid 62.

  106. Ibid 54

  107. Ibid 58.

  108. Ibid 66; Koskenniemi, supra note 15, 475.

  109. Watt, supra note 31, 52; emphasis in original.

  110. D’Aspremont, supra note 60, 559.

  111. Dosse, supra note 19.

  112. Goodrich, supra note 30, 368.

  113. Ibid.

  114. Ibid 371; similarly, ‘[t]he point of origin of the jus gentium:’ ibid 374.

  115. Ian Parker, Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Revolutions in Subjectivity (Routledge, London, 2011) 23; Dosse, supra note 53, 216, 284.

  116. Jacques Rancière, The Method of Equality (Polity Press, 2016) 159. This complexity is recognised by Orford, supra note 13, 18.

  117. Tim Mooney and Dermot Moran (eds) The Phenomenology Reader (Routledge, London, 2002) 511.

  118. Christian Windler, Towards the Empire of a ‘Civilizing Nation’: The French Revolution and Its Impact on Relations with the Ottoman Regencies in the Maghreb, in, Koskenniemi, Rech and Jiménez Fonseca (eds), supra note 10 at 201, 219.

  119. Luigi Nuzzo, Territory, Sovereignty, and the Construction of Colonial Space,’ in, ibid, at 263, 266.

  120. Hoffmann, supra note 34, 958.

  121. Augsberg, supra note 13. See, JR Morss, Pluralism, Peoplehood and Political Theology in International Legal Scholarship, 27 Griffith L Rev (2018) 77.

  122. Koskenniemi, supra note 8, 517.

  123. Costas Douzinas, Speaking Law, in, A Orford (ed) International Law and its Others (CUP, Cambridge, 2006) 35, 40.

  124. A Anghie, On Critique and the Other, in, Orford, ibid, 389, 394.

  125. A Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (CUP, Cambridge, 2005) 318.

  126. Ibid 319. On international legal theory and empire, also see, L Benton, Made in Empire: Finding the History of International Law in Imperial Locations: Introduction, 31 Leiden J Intl L (2018) 473; Prabhakar Singh, Of International Law, Semi-colonial Thailand, and Imperial Ghosts, 9 Asian J Intl L (2019) 46 at 55 arguing the 'post-structuralists' seemingly 'hide behind an esoteric vocabulary as if to evade the wrath of post-colonial states.This has left the job of challenging the state for the post-colonials alone to do.'

  127. Ibid 394.

  128. Ibid 319.

  129. Anghie, Imperialism and International Legal Theory, in Orford & Hoffmann, supra note 4, 158, 160.

  130. Anghie, supra note 125, 318.

  131. ‘The being we become when we take up the place of the calculating decision-maker, … is still one whose calculations and exchanges involve this touching, this desire to encounter the other:’ Orford, Trade, Human Rights and the Economy of Sacrifice, in, Orford (ed) supra note 123 at 196.

  132. Aristodemou, supra note 13, 38.

  133. Helmut P Aust, Fundamental Rights of States: Constitutional Law in Disguise?, 4 Cambridge J Intl Comp L (2015) 521.

  134. Aristodemou, supra note 13, 49.

  135. Parker, supra note 115.

  136. Aristodemou, supra note 13, 49.

  137. The dark sides to desire as a form of explanation, must also be recognised. Among many others, philosopher Martin Heidegger made extensive use of the analogy of person and nation, for example in his 1933-4 teaching on peoplehood and the state. Heidegger identified an erotic relationship between people and state. For Heidegger a Schmittian, formal distinction of friend versus enemy was too cold and rational a basis for nationhood or for peoplehood: Gregory Fried and Richard Polt, Introduction, in, G Fried and R Polt (trns & ed) Martin Heidegger, Nature, History, State 1933-1934 (Bloomsbury Press, London, 2013) 7, 92.

  138. JR Morss, Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Fish? Rethinking What the Law Wishes to Have, 27 Melbourne Univ L Rev (2003) 199.

  139. Douzinas, supra note 123, 55-6.

  140. Aristodemou, supra note 13, 37.

  141. Dosse, supra note 19, 119.

  142. Aristodemou, supra note 13, 56; also see Orford, supra note 13, 18 on ‘the Father (God/Market) who sees in secret.’

  143. Aristodemou, supra note 13, 47.

  144. Ibid 37.

  145. Ibid 56.

  146. Ibid.

  147. Ibid 37.

  148. Ibid 35.

  149. Ibid 57.

  150. Ibid 58.

  151. Ibid 45.

  152. David Kennedy, The Dark Sides of Virtue: Reassessing International Humanitarianism (Princeton University Press, 2004). Ian Parker refers to ‘the romantic fantasy that there is something hidden that can be unearthed’ by psychoanalysis: Parker, supra note 115, 108.

  153. David Kennedy, Critical Theory, Structuralism and Contemporary Legal Scholarship, 21 New England L Rev (1986) 249.

  154. Sahib Singh, Narrative and Theory: Formalism’s Recurrent Return, 84 British Yrbk Intl L (2014) 342.

  155. David Couzens Hoy, Critical Resistance: From Poststructuralism to Post-Critique (2004) 114.

  156. Singh, supra note 70, 207, 212. Note that ‘a kind of Sartrean subjectivist mould’ was developed quite illicitly by the Critical Legal Studies movement out of deconstruction, according to Jacques de Ville. J de Ville, Jacques Derrida: Law as Absolute Hospitality (Routledge, London, 2011) 196.

  157. Singh, supra note 70, 214. Note however that for Singh, an appropriate methodology is one that is ‘enmeshed in the intellectual vehicles of a given text, the text’s strategies of containment … exposing what [the text] does not let us see, but depends upon:’ ibid, 215.

  158. On Westphalia as origin myth, see, Fleur Johns, Theorizing the Corporation in International Law, in Orford & Hoffmann, supra note 4, 635, 635; Orford, supra note 13, 9.

  159. Kennedy, supra note 153.

  160. Singh, supra note 3, 705. As Bianchi reminds us, citing Deborah Cass, ‘knowing who we are’ is by no means the same as the more important ‘changing what we do’: Bianchi, supra note 15, 178.

  161. Koskenniemi, supra note 1. Scholarly reference to the experiences of named persons, whether oneself or colleagues, and the vicissitudes of those experiences, seems symptomatic: d’Aspremont, supra note 25, 638. D’Aspremont emphasises the role of personal experience in international lawyers’ ‘sense of obligation’: d’Aspremont, supra note 49, 51.

  162. Koskenniemi, supra note 1, 727-8.

  163. D’Aspremont, supra note 49, 8, 117, 19.

  164. Ibid 17; compare the ‘exposé of the “politics of international law”’ reported by Koskenniemi: M Koskenniemi, Imagining the Rule of Law: Rereading the Grotian ‘Tradition’, 30 European J Intl L (2019) 17, 18.

  165. Koskenniemi, supra note 1, 727.

  166. D’Aspremont, supra note 25, 629.

  167. Bianchi, supra note 15, 165.

  168. Koskenniemi, supra note 164, 17, 27.

  169. Ibid 28.

  170. Orford, supra note 14, 623.

  171. Ibid 618-619.

  172. Ibid.

  173. Ibid 617.

  174. Justin Desautels-Stein, Back in Style, 25 Law Critique (2014) 141.

  175. For example, ‘managerialism’: d’Aspremont, supra note 25, 631.

  176. Singh, supra note 3, 703.

  177. Koskenniemi, supra note 164, 18

  178. Aristodemou, supra note 13, 35.

  179. N Davies, Europe: A History (OUP, Oxford, 1996); N Davies, Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe (Allen Lane, London, 2011); Jean-Paul Kauffmann, A Journey to Nowhere: Detours and Riddles in the Lands and History of Courland (MacLehose Press, London, 2012).

  180. Connal Parsley, Seasons in the Abyss, in A Orford (ed) International Law and its Others (CUP, Cambridge, 2006) 100, 113.

  181. Allott, supra note 7, 276.

  182. Orford, supra note 14, 621.

  183. Orford and Hoffmann, supra note 4, 9.

  184. Williams, supra note 54, 23.

  185. Simpson, supra note 7, 19.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Deakin Law School, Burwood, Victoria, Australia

    John R. Morss

Authors
  1. John R. Morss
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to John R. Morss.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Morss, J.R. Description without apology? On structures, signs and subjectivity in international legal scholarship. Indian Journal of International Law 58, 235–264 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40901-019-00105-9

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40901-019-00105-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation