INTRODUCTION

Although Judith Gardam's work dealt with some of the most serious and poignant areas of international law, that of international humanitarian law and aspects of proportionality and gender, her writing was also creative and exploratory. An example of this creativity was her chapter in Sexing the Subject of Law, in which she used the device of an alien to investigate what international humanitarian law looks like from the outside. Gardam's chapter was entitled ‘An Alien's Encounter with the Law of Armed Conflict’. Her device of using a fantasy character of an alien to investigate what law looks like is adopted in this chapter. I have chosen this as the organising idea of my chapter in honour of Gardam for two reasons: first, in conversation, Gardam said that she enjoyed writing her chapter; and second, she created an intriguing idea that I strongly believe merits exploration and, indeed, reapplying in the twenty-first century. The idea that Gardam created is to understand the players in international law — the subjects of international law — by examining the ‘distinguishing features of these players’ and thereby elucidating their ‘distinguishing features’.

My chapter will use this device of the ‘alien’ as a form of personified objectivity, but rather than examining international humanitarian law, I will take Gardam's alien and consider the question: What is the role of the scholar of international law? The alien will travel through space, first viewing the world from afar, and then coming into law's orbit, landing and speaking to an individual. At each point, the alien will reflect on the various levels of analysis which scholars could employ in their scholarship. So, for example, the scholar could ask questions that consider the relationship of international law with the whole world, or its relationship with the state or particular individuals.