Martti Koskenniemi, the Mainstream, and Self-Reflectivity
29 Leiden Journal of International Law (2016), Forthcoming
Amsterdam Law School Research Paper No. 2016-03
Amsterdam Center for International Law No. 2016-01
25 Pages Posted: 21 Jan 2016 Last revised: 28 Jan 2016
Date Written: January 20, 2016
Abstract
This article argues that contemporary international lawyers all sing the same critical refrain but few have really confronted and integrated the critical attitude deployed in From Apology to Utopia. After the denial and perplexity of the first encounters with Martti Koskenniemi's work, international lawyers came to feel that they had domesticated the perplexity provoked by it. They now all enthuse about the new self-reflectivity that their victorious struggle with From Apology to Utopia supposedly allowed them to acquire. In sum, the contemporary self-proclaimed self-reflective international lawyers, after reading From Apology to Utopia, have returned to business as usual, continuing to let the discipline’s vocabulary decide on their behalf.
Keywords: International Law, critical legal studies, structuralism, deconstructivism, mainstream, self-reflectivity, Koskenniemi, From Apology to Utopia, methods, aesthetics
JEL Classification: K33
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation