What does it mean to practice public international law? This is a frequent topic of conversation for many of us who work with law students inspired to study the law and pursue legal vocations in the belief that peace, justice, and human rights may be best advanced through the international legal framework. But, as our students often discover, that framework can be deeply frustrating. From its heavily bureaucratic structure anchored in the United Nations (UN) system, to the unresolved tension between individuals and states as actors in and beneficiaries of international law, public international law can often seem as much an obstacle as a means to our virtue.

This chapter examines the ethic of praxis in public international law by examining an often-overlooked area of international legal practice: refugee and asylum law. An ethic of praxis, as I discuss it in this chapter, is an ethic with attention to creatureliness, which is to say finitude.