Craftsmanship in International Law

In: American journal of international law: AJIL, Volume 50, Issue 1, p. 32-60

Abstract

During critical phases in the development of a legal system the quality of the craftsmanship which practitioners of the law bring to its service can have a decisive influence on the process of development and on the whole texture of the legal system resulting from that process of development. So it was when the great civilians transformed the law of an overgrown city state into the law of an imperial commonwealth; so it was when the glossators laid the foundations of the modern civil law; so it was when the Bench and Bar of England created the common law; so it is today in the case of international law.