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Opportunity and impasse: social change and the limits of international legal strategy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 August 2020

Lee McConnell Open the ORCID record for Lee McConnell [Opens in a new window]
Lee McConnell*
Affiliation:
University of Bristol, Office 3.21, 8-10 Berkeley Square, Bristol, UK
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: Lee.mcconnell@bristol.ac.uk
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Abstract

A diverse range of actors, from practitioners and academics to civil society groups and activists, appear to see hope in international law for the advancement of their causes. This paper examines whether this optimism is well-founded. It explores whether international law can serve as an agent of social change, and whether it can accommodate radical changes in social order. It begins by exposing a formalist stance that is immanent to much ‘legal activist’ discourse. It then explores links between this mode of jurisprudential thought and idealist epistemology. Drawing from the philosophy of Theodor Adorno, and in particular his notion of ‘identity-thinking’, it uncovers structural connections between formalism, idealism, law, and economy that call into question international law's socially-transformative potential. The perspective advanced in this paper falls somewhere between the polarities of opportunity and impasse, seeking to acknowledge the importance of legal strategies in safeguarding the disenfranchised, while remaining alive to their potential dangers and limitations.

Keywords

international lawsocial changeformalismepistemologyAdornoKelsenPashukanis
Type
Research Article
Information
International Theory , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , March 2022 , pp. 25 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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