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Acts of repetition abound in international law. Security Council Resolutions typically start by recalling, recollecting, recognising or reaffirming previous resolutions. Expert committees present restatements of international law. Students and staff extensively rehearse fictitious cases in presentations for moot court competitions. Customary law exists by virtue of repeated behaviour and restatements about the existence of rules. When sources of international law are deployed, historically contingent events are turned into manifestations of pre-given and repeatable categories. This book studies the workings of repetition across six discourses and practices in international law. It links acts of repetition to similar practices in religion, theatre, film and commerce. Building on the dialectics of repetition as set out by Søren Kierkegaard, it examines how repetition in international law is used to connect concrete practices to something that is bound to remain absent, unspeakable or unimaginable

The past few decades have witnessed a renewed interest in the work of Carl Schmitt. Scholars from various disciplines have claimed that Schmitt's critique of universalism, together with his analysis of irregular warfare, provides useful lenses to make sense of the post 9/11 world. In this article, I will critically assess whether Schmitt's work is indeed useful for understanding the post 9/11 world. To that end, I will concentrate on one of the core arguments put forward by Schmitt: that the laws of armed conflict are unable to regulate irregular warfare, including acts of terrorism. In order to determine the validity of Schmitt's arguments, I will focus on one of the instruments used in contemporary counter-terrorism policies: the deliberate killing of specific individuals who are regarded as a security threat ('targeted killing'). Based on an analysis of US and Israeli practice, the article argues that using Schmitt's work as an analytical tool yields mixed results. While his analysis of irregular warfare remains relevant for contemporary conflicts, his denouncement of universalism blinds us to the transformational potential of international law.

Part I. Populism and International Law -- Chapter 1. Populism and International Law: What Backlash and Which Rubicon? -- Chapter 2. Trump, International Trade, and Populism -- Chapter 3. Populist Paranoia and International Law -- Chapter 4. Is There a 'Populist' International Law (In Latin America)? -- Chapter 5. Populism, International Law and the End of Keep Calm and Carry on Lawyering -- Chapter 6. People, Politics and Populism in International Criminal Law: The Mungiki as Kenyan Ethnos and Kenyan Demos -- Chapter 7. Democracy and Human Rights -- Chapter 8. Reclaiming the Keys to the Kingdom (of the World): Evangelicals and Human Rights in Latin America -- Chapter 9. Addressing Economic Populism Through Law – A Case Study of the World Development Report 2017 -- Part II. Dutch Practice -- Chapter 10. Climate Action as Positive Human Rights Obligation: The Appeals Judgment in Urgenda v The Netherlands -- Chapter 11. Pursuing Justice for MH17: The Role of the Netherlands -- Chapter 12. What a Drag(net): Dutch Surveillance Laws in the Light of European Union Data Protection Law -- Table of cases -- Index

AbstractThe past few decades have witnessed a fundamental change in the perception of threats to the security of states and individuals. Issues of security are no longer primarily framed in terms of threats posed by an identifiable, conventional enemy. Instead, post-Cold War security policies have emphasised the global and radically uncertain nature of threats such as environmental degradation, terrorism and financial risks. What are the implications of this transformation for one of the constitutive principles of international society: state sovereignty? Existing literature has provided two possible answers to this question. The first focuses on the alleged need for states to seek international cooperation and to relax claims of national sovereignty. In Ulrich Beck's terminology, this would amount to a transformation of sovereign states into 'cosmopolitan states'. The second takes the opposite position: in response to uncertain threats states rely on their sovereign prerogatives to take exceptional measures and set aside provisions of positive law. In Beck's terminology, this would amount to the creation of a 'surveillance state'. None of these two answers, however, does justice to the complex relation between sovereignty, power and (international) law. As this article will show, the invocation of radical uncertainty has led to a transformation in sovereignty that cannot be captured in terms of the cosmopolitan/surveillance dichotomy. What is at stake is a more fundamental transformation of the way in which sovereignty is used to counter threats. Based on a study of the UN Counterterrorism Committee, this article demonstrates how state sovereignty is used as a governmental technology that aims to create proactive, responsible subjects.