Constructivism and International Law

Abstract

Over the last decade or so a new dialogue has emerged between international relations (IR) theorists interested in the social creation of identity and who focus attention on the role of norms in international politics, and international law (IL) scholars for whom normative evolution is a stock-in-trade. These norm-interested IR thinkers have been labeled “constructivists.” Although we argue that constructivists have yet to fully exploit the mutual learning that is possible in the interaction of constructivist IR thinking and international legal theorizing, there is a promising openness to dialogue. Constructivism helps explain how IL can exist and influence behavior, and IL can help inform a richer understanding of the particular roles of different categories of norms in international society. Constructivist work has so far focused upon the building of social norms through interaction, and on the pathways through which they come to influence actors. Overall, too little effort has been expended upon tracing out the distinctions between social and legal norms, but there is nothing in constructivism that denigrates the distinction or resists such analysis, as some recent work has shown. In this chapter we canvass the reasons underlying the emergence of constructivist thought in IR, and trace out its major preoccupations (Part II). We then highlight key themes in constructivist engagement with IL (Part III), before detailing how international lawyers have deployed constructivist insights (Part IV). Next, we canvass central themes in the interdisciplinary dialogue between constructivism and international law (Part V). Finally, we evaluate the most salient insights and contributions of the literature to date, and identify gaps and productive directions for future work (Part VI).