Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T05:10:11.718Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Case Analysis: Faith, Identity, and the Killing of the Innocent: International Lawyers and Nuclear Weapons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2004

Martti Koskenniemi
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The dichotomy of reason and passion is so deeply embedded in the construction of what is ‘legal‘ that it seems difficult even to imagine an international law that would not be entrenched in it. The very identity of international law seems based on its capacity to set itself on the side of reason, in opposition to the passionate, the irrational. Is not reason practically synonymous with order, and passion with chaos? And what is law for if not to bring about order, and to allow exit from our slavery under passion? Is not reason what is universal and objective, while passion is particular and subjective? And is it not then the case that a law pretending to universality must perforce align itself with the forces of reason?

Keywords

International Court of Justiceinternational lawlawyerslegal philosophynuclear weapons
Type
HAGUE INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS: International Court of Justice
Information
Leiden Journal of International Law , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , March 1997 , pp. 137 - 162
Copyright
© 1997 Kluwer Law International

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)