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Rebel Without a Cause? Martti Koskenniemi and the Critical Legal Project

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Jason A. Beckett

Extract

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Few books have attained the influence and impact of Martti Koskenniemi's From Apology to Utopia (FATU); fewer still could have made anything like such an impact with a publication run and consequent distribution as small as FATU's. Thus, as has undoubtedly been said before, and will undoubtedly be repeated subsequently, Cambridge University Press must be congratulated on their decision to publish a new edition, with a far larger print run, and wider distribution.

Type
Articles: Special Issue
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 7 , Issue 12: Special issue - From Apology to Utopia: A Symposium , 01 December 2006 , pp. 1045 - 1088
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

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93 This was my second misreading, supra note 64. On the limitations of immanent critique, see Id. at 600.Google Scholar

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104 Id. at 495–6 and on Friedman in particular, Id. at 498. The impossibility of reaching a determinate understanding of the demands of contemporary Public International Law by reference to classic Kelsenian methods is highlighted and persuasively demonstrated by the most consistent neo-Kelsenian currently writing on the subject of Public International Law, Jörg Kammerhofer, The Uncertainty in the Formal Sources of International Law: Customary International Law and Some of Its Problems, 15 EJIL 523 (2004).Google Scholar

105 Koskenniemi, , supra note 7, at 500, 503. Again, Kammerhofer's writings may be relevant here, as they suggest that Kelsen was fully aware of the necessary indeterminacy of normative orders; that, in fact, Kelsen has been consistently, and radically, misunderstood by a legal academy which precisely fails to recognise his radicality. See, especially, his Uncertainty in International law. What does it look like, what causes it? (Aug 31 2006) (unpublished Ph.D, University of Vienna 2006) (Available at the University of Vienna Library and the Austrian National Library in Vienna).Google Scholar

106 In a similar vein, when understood in light of its own project, the eighth chapter of FATU does not contradict the first seven; see Koskenniemi, , supra note 1, at 602–4.Google Scholar

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116 Actually, this claim may be a little too strong. If instrumentalism is excluded as a competent approach to international law then the words of a text would have some constraining force on interpretation; see notes 196–201 and accompanying text, infra.Google Scholar

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143 See, for example, Dupuy, Pierre-Marie, Some Reflections on Contemporary International Law and the Appeal to Universal Values: A Response to Martti Koskenniemi, 16 EJIL 131 (2005).Google Scholar

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150 Perhaps a more telling analogy would be with the claim that immigrant communities in the England must be speaking a form of English, because they reside, interact, and communicate in England.Google Scholar

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155 Put differently, Koskenniemi underestimates the importance of the Kantian observation that claims of legality preclude moral responsibility for the outcomes of (lawful) actions; however, see also supra note 131 and accompanying text, supra.Google Scholar

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202 This is so on two levels, first the viciously unfair and exploitative world trade system, on which see Id. The second is the concept of “ecological debt”. Put simply, for everyone on the planet to enjoy an average British lifestyle, we would require the resources of 3.1 planet Earths. Consequently, this lifestyle can only be maintained by expropriating resources, and actively denying them to those in the developing world. See, for example http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4897252.stm and: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4696924.stm Google Scholar

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207 Id. at 77. His 2006 “Chorley Lecture” covered similar ground; this should be published in the Modern Law Review in 2007.Google Scholar

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