Brill Research Perspectives in International Legal Theory and Practice – serie

In The Organisation of the Anthropocene, J. E. Viñuales explores the legal dimensions of the currently advocated new geological epoch called the Anthropocene, in which humans are the defining force. He examines in this context two basic propositions. First, law as a technology of social organisation has been neglected in the otherwise highly technology-focused accounts by natural and social scientists of the drivers of the Anthropocene. Secondly, in those rare instances where law has been discussed, there is a tendency to assume that the role of law is to tackle the negative externalities of transactions (e.g. their environmental or social implications) rather than the core of the underlying transactions, i.e. the organisation of production and consumption processes. Such focus on externalities fails to unveil the role of law in prompting, sustaining and potentially managing the processes that have led to the Anthropocene.

In Political Theology and International Law, John D. Haskell offers an account of the intellectual debates surrounding the term ‘political theology’ in academic literature concerning international law. Beneath these differences is a shared tradition, or genre, within the literature that reinforces particular styles of characterising and engaging predicaments in global politics. The text develops an argument toward another way of thinking about what political theology might offer international law scholarship—a politics of truth.

In Re-Situating Utopia Matthew Nicholson argues that international law and international legal theory are dominated by a ‘blueprint’ utopianism that presents international law as the means of achieving a better global future. Contesting the dominance of this blueprintism, Nicholson argues that this approach makes international law into what philosopher Louis Marin describes as a “degenerate utopia” – a fantastical means of trapping thought and practice within contemporary social and political conditions, blocking any possibility that those conditions might be transcended. As an alternative, Nicholson argues for an iconoclastic international legal utopianism – Utopia not as a ‘blueprint’ for a better future, operating within the confines of existing social and political reality, but as a means of seeking to negate and exit from that reality – as the only way to maintain the idea that international law offers a path towards a truly better future.

This book questions the critical attitude that is informing the critical histories that have been flourishing since the ‘historical turn’ in international law. It makes the argument that the ‘historical turn’ falls short of being radically critical as the abounding critical histories which have come to populate the international literature over the last decades continue to be orchestrated along the very lines set by the linear historical narratives which they seek to question and disrupt, thereby repressing the imagination of international lawyers. It makes the point that the critical histories that have accompanied the ‘historical turn’ have contributed to the repression of disciplinary imagination just like other linear disciplinary histories. This book argues that the critical histories must move beyond a mere historiographical attitude and promotes radical historical critique in order to unbridle disciplinary imagination.

In international law interpretation is ubiquitous. However, whereas in the case of treaty interpretation, this process has been codified in Articles 31-33 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the interpretation of rules of customary international law has remained largely unexplored. This monograph demonstrates not only that rules of customary international law can be interpreted but also that they have continuously been interpreted by international and domestic courts. Through an examination of this case-law, the various methods of interpretation of customary rules and their limits are identified as well as the similarities and differences with the rules of treaty interpretation.