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19 - The Hidden Theology of International Legal Positivism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2021

By
Akbar Rasulov
Edited by
Pamela Slotte  and
John D. Haskell
Pamela Slotte
Affiliation:
Åbo Akademi University
John D. Haskell
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Summary

This chapter is a study in the critical deconstruction of one of the most popular theoretical paradigms in modern international law and its basic ideological impact on international law as a discipline. The paradigm in question is voluntarist positivism, and the general thrust of its ideological impact on the discipline of international law, I am going to argue, has been to encourage within it the rise and spread of what one might call a theoretical culture of bad faith – a mix of false consciousness, self-censorship, and a “crooked attitude towards truth and knowledge”– particularly, in what concerns international law’s relationship with natural law and Christian theology.

The last two sentences use a lot of notoriously ambivalent concepts. For the prevention of doubt, let me explain briefly how I understand them in these pages.

Keywords

International legal positivismpositivismnatural lawcritical legal theorycritique of ideologyImmanuel Kantinternational lawAdam Smiththeories of free willpredestination paradoxDuns Scotustheology of international legal thought
Type
Chapter
Information
Christianity and International Law
An Introduction
 , pp. 415 - 460
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Recommended Reading

Fassbender, Bardo, and Peters, Anne, eds. The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Kammerhofer, Jörg, and d’Aspremont, Jean, eds. International Legal Positivism in a Post-Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Kennedy, David. “A New World Order: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.” Transnational Law Contemporary Problems 4, no. 2 (1994): 329–76.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Duncan. A Critique of Adjudication: (fin de siècle). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Marks, Susan. The Riddle of All Constitutions: International Law, Democracy, and the Critique of Ideology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Olsen, Frances E. “The Family and the Market: A Study of Ideology and Legal Reform.” Harvard Law Review 96, no. 7 (1983): 1497–578.Google Scholar

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