Cognitive Conflicts and the Making of International Law: From Empirical Concord to Conceptual Discord in Legal Scholarship

Abstract

This Article seeks to shed some light on the choices made by scholars in modelling and cognizing international lawmaking processes. After a brief outline of the mainstream descriptive frameworks used to cognize and model normmaking processes in international law, this paper elaborates on the driving forces at work behind each of such descriptive frameworks. In doing so, this chapter draws attention to the politics of empiricism and cognition with a view to offering some critical reflection on how international legal scholars and practitioners have been making sense of international lawmaking. Particular attention is paid to static and dynamic conceptions of lawmaking based on subjects, the pedigree of rules, participation, impact, or a mix of them.

Keywords: International Law, International Law-Making, Pluralization, Pluralism, Statecentricism, Non-State Actors, Subjecthood, International Legal Personality, Global Administrative Law, New Haven, Public Authority

JEL Classification: K33