Introduction: Mapping 21st Century International Legal Positivism

Abstract:     
This paper will form the introductory chapter of a research project the authors are presently directing, entitled International Legal Positivism in a Post-Modern World. The edited volume with the same title, to be published in 2012, will consist of 24 chapters and will be co-edited by the two authors. In its present manifestation, the paper serves as advertisement for the core aims and goals of the project, as a way of engaging with the wider scholarly community and debating the issues the project raises before the book is published.

The core idea of the project is that positivism as family of theoretical approaches to international law has radically transformed itself in the 21st century, not least because of the critique leveled at ‘classical’ forms of international legal positivism. This ‘post-modern’ positivism is different, because it takes into account the arguments of inter alia the Critical Legal Studies movement while departing from it with respect to its own constructive project. The project introduced here will seek to carry out an in-depth scholarly study of where the positivist approach to international legal scholarship stands at the end of the first decade of the 21st century and whether it can be sustainable. This means taking a hard look at whether positivism remains a cogent approach for the future of international legal scholarship, and, if so, what forms it is, can be, or ought to be taking. We will enquire whether the current state of the international society and of international legal scholarship calls for a profound renewal of the paradigms of international legal positivism and what this renewal looks like.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 9

Keywords: International Legal Positivism, International Law, HLA Hart, Hans Kelsen, Positivism, Legal Theory, Jurisprudence, Formalism, Legal Realism, Constitutionalism, Deconstruction, Critical Legal Studies, Natural Law, Use of Force, Investment Law, Sources of International Law, Interpretation, Statehood

Accepted Paper Series