From an airstrip in Saudi Arabia, the CIA launches drones to 'legally' kill Al-Qaida leaders in Yemen. On the North Pole, Russia plants a flag on the seabed to extend legal claim over resources. In Brussels, the European Commission unveils its Emissions Trading System, extending environmental jurisdiction globally over foreign airlines. And at Frankfurt Airport, a father returning from holiday is detained because his name appears on a security list. Today, legality commands substantial currency in world affairs, yet growing reference to international legality has not marked the end of strategic struggles in global affairs. Rather, it has shifted the field and manner of play for a plurality of actors who now use, influence and contest the way that law's rule is applied to address global problems. Drawing on a range of case studies, this volume explores the various meanings and implications of legality across scholarly, institutional and policy settings.
Oliver Kessler: Introduction to the Forum: The Status of Law in World Society 236-241. - T. E. Aalberts: Interdisciplinarity on the Move: Reading Kratochwil as Counter-Disciplinarity Proper 242-249. - Jens Bartelson: The Language of Law and the Laws of Language 250-257. - Wouter Werner: What's Going On? Reflections on Kratochwil's Concept of Law 258-268. - Oliver Kessler: Practices and the Problem of World Society 269-277. - Friedrich Kratochwil: Of Words and Deeds: A Reply to My Critics 278-291
The standard of civilisation is most often identified as the infamous legal doctrine that legitimised imperialist rule and the exclusion of non-European non-Christian states from the international society. In disciplinary narratives of both International Relations and International Law this colonial project is usually presented as a mere interlude on the way to a mature and inclusive international society based sovereign equality as its organising principle. In line with more critical historiography, which shows how colonialism is the condition of possibility for both sovereignty and international law, this article investigates how a standard of civilisation is inherent in political legal practices of international ordering. Moreover, while usually presented as a practice of exclusion, this article will analyse the more intricate dynamic of inclusion and exclusion as a basis for international order by addressing the legal politics of subjecthood (as objects and subjects of the imagined global regime). More specifically, it will address how law operates as a technology through the interplay between a standard of civilisation, the principle of equality and legal subjectivity. The article will look into legal practices of different historical periods (in the age of discovery, during the colonial expansion, and in modern international society) to analyse the workings and transformations of these legal technologies. Together this will show how an (implicit) standard of civilisation is entrenched in the operation of law as a technology of international order. This does not stop with the universalisation of sovereign equality as the organising principle of an inclusive or 'global' international society. This article will argue that this reveals the productive power of law which functions not just as a juridical rule to regulate relations between independent and equal sovereign subjects, but operates as the norm to produce appropriate sovereigns as members of the international society.
In: Journal of international relations and development: JIRD, official journal of the Central and East European International Studies Association, Band 17, Heft 4, S. 439-468
This article analyses the interplay between politics and law in the recent attempts to strengthen the humanitarian commitment to saving lives in mare liberum. Despite a long-standing obligation to aid people in distress at sea, this so-called search and rescue regime has been marred by conflicts and political standoffs as states were faced with a growing number of capsising boat migrants potentially claiming international protection once on dry land. Attempts to provide a legal solution to these problems have resulted in a re-spatialisation of the high seas, extending the states' obligations in the international public domain based on geography rather than traditional functionalist principles that operated in the open seas. However, inadvertently, this further legalisation has equally enabled states to instrumentalise law to barter off and deconstruct responsibility by reference to traditional norms of sovereignty and maritime law. In other words, states may be able to reclaim sovereign power by becoming increasingly norm-savvy and successfully navigating the legal playing field provided by the very expansion of international law itself. Thus, rather than being simply a space of non-sovereignty per se, mare liberum becomes the venue for a complex game of sovereignty, law and politics. Adapted from the source document.