It's about legal practice, stupid

Extract

With his book “The Gentle Civilizer of Nations”, the Finnish expert on international law Martti Koskenniemi, became the most widely read author in his field overnight. In the “Gentle Civilizer”, Koskenniemi presented a new history of international law between 1870 and 1960. The tremendous success of this book rested less on an amazing number of revealing observations, but rather on its new take on the history of this discipline. In Koskenniemi's interpretation, the scientific project of international law did not start off as an endeavour that was centred on the sovereignty of nation-states. Instead, the international lawyers of that era saw their subject in the light of the idealist political project of internationalism. When they were forced to give up their high hopes in the course of the 20th century — this is where the twist of the book lies — they not only abandoned their dreams, but also their craft as lawyers. They became mere engineers of international relations, pragmatists, and apologists of governmental power. In order to retrieve the craft of international law, Koskenniemi concludes, the discipline needs to handle legal forms in a politically reflective manner. Koskenniemi has labelled this squaring of the circle, in a much-cited expression, as the “Culture of Formalism.”