The Structure of the International Legal Discourse
European Society of International Law Florence Founding Conference, 2004
4 Pages Posted: 12 Sep 2010
Date Written: 2004
Abstract
My topic in this short paper is the structure of the international legal discourse developed from an essentially phenomenological angle. My primary objective in this inquiry is to try to articulate a general understanding of the social practice of international law, conceived of as a professional project orchestrated and carried out by socially conditioned agents. My secondary objective is to clarify some ontological implications of this project’s internal structure. The principal thesis explored in this paper is that, seen from this angle, international law appears to be unconsciously seeking to emulate medicine in that it constructs its principal social task in terms of a search for 'diagnosis' and 'cure', while also attempting to share in medicine's social career in that it seeks to create around this 'central core' a certain zone of spin and positive advertisement. I argue that this vision is deeply flawed if only because it is based on an ontological impossibility, but that the very terms on which the international law project is built suggest that this, too, is part of its design.
Keywords: international legal theory, semiotics of international legal discourse, international law as a project, new approaches to international law
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