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Sisyphus was an international lawyer. On Martti Koskenniemi's “From Apology to Utopia” and the place of law in international politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Jochen von Bernstorff

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From Apology to Utopia is a disturbing reading experience. I first came across Martti Koskenniemi's book of 1989 during research for my thesis on Hans Kelsen. In his monograph “Das Problem der Souveränität”, published immediately after the First World War, Kelsen attempted to destroy the central doctrinal pillars of the nineteenth century German international law discourse by exposing the ideological nature of its central doctrines, such as the concept of the sovereign will of the state, autolimitation and consent. 70 years later, the analytical programme of From Apology to Utopia deconstructed international law by exposing the inherent “political” nature of international legal discourse, interpreted as an argumentative practice. Exposing the unstable discursive boundaries between politics and international law is the central objective of this monograph. Martti Koskenniemi portrays international legal doctrine as an inherently contradictory and repetitive argumentative routine that is incapable of producing meaningful “legal” results. International lawyers somewhat tragically feel compelled to engage in this Sisyphean routine in order to maintain their professional identity.

Type
Articles: Special Issue
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 7 , Issue 12: Special issue - From Apology to Utopia: A Symposium , 01 December 2006 , pp. 1015 - 1035
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

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64 For Koskenniemi, , human rights can have a negative effect on political culture. Institutionalised rights can loose their progressive character and marginalize those community-values or interests that resist translation into rights language, Koskenniemi, Martti, The Effect of Rights on a Political Culture, in The EU and Human Rights, 99 (Philip Alston ed., 1999), Koskenniemi agrees with Karl Marx that human rights are a “theology of the bourgeois state whose citizens are obsessed by their weakness, and fearful of “evil” are ever ready to turn whatever powers into the hands of a bureaucratic theocracy”, Koskenniemi, Martti, What Should International Lawyers Learn from Karl Marx?, 17 Leiden Journal of International Law 229, 244 (2004); in line with his own concept of legal universalism Koskenniemi acknowledges, however, that rights can open a political culture to experiences of injustice and “provide a voice through which the pain of torture, for example can be articulated”, Koskenniemi, Martti, The Effect of Rights on a Political Culture, in The EU and Human Rights 99 (Philip Alston ed., 1999); on the concept of human rights as a medium to express experiences of injustice and fear: Günther, Klaus, The Legacies of Injustice and Fear: A European Approach to Human Rights and their Effects on Political Culture, in The EU and Human Rights, 177 (Philip Alston ed., 1999); on Koskenniemi's “negative” universalism and human rights: Brunkhorst, Hauke, Verfallsgeschichten, 2 Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 295, 311 (2002).Google Scholar

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