What Should Remain of the Critical Approaches to International Law?: International Legal Theory as Critique

• Tilmann Altwicker ^[1] ; Oliver Diggelmann ^[2]
  1. [1] University of Basel

     University of Basel

     Basilea, Suiza

     
  2. [2] University of Zurich

     University of Zurich

     Zürich, Suiza

     
• Localización: Schweizerische Zeitschrift für internationales und europäisches Recht = Revue suisse de droit international et droit européen, ISSN 1019-0406, Vol. 24, Nº 1, 2014, págs. 69-92
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The article explores what should remain of the 'critical approaches' to international law. The notion 'critical approaches' is used as an umbrella term and refers to a bundle of loosely related approaches including the 'new approaches to international law' (NAIL) or 'newstream', the 'Third World Approaches to International Law' (TWAIL) and the 'feminist approaches'. The article argues that their common denominator is a specific project of 'critique'. The aim of 'critique' is to identify underlying structures and fundamental shortcomings of international law and to assess the rational potential of the international legal order. The article sheds light on the 'critical toolkit' and international law's biases, as a key topic of critique. It identifies three candidates for the role of enduring contributions to the discipline: the claim for context sensitive doctrinal work, the analysis of the ambivalent roles of seemingly 'progressive' discourses, such as, e.g., those on human rights and on 'international law and democracy', and the insights of critique into the role of subjectivity in the work of international lawyers. The article comes to the conclusion that most contemporary strands in international legal theory underestimate this 'critical heritage'.