Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4rdrl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-19T21:40:43.412Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Postscript – on Kelsenian formalism in international law (2010)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2011

Jochen von Bernstorff
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht, Germany
Get access

Summary

Interest in the history of the discipline of international law, in general, and in Hans Kelsen, in particular, has continued to grow in the years since the original publication of this study. Various reasons seem at play here: the study of the first high phase of the modern discipline of international law in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries may help to reassure a discipline that finds itself under growing pressure to justify its existence. What, after all, can international lawyers with their own epistemological traditions and sensibilities contribute to the conversation about global law that political scientists, economists, and sociologists cannot do equally as well or better? And when the debate revolves around the foundations of the discipline, Kelsen's name keeps cropping up and his project seems to assume new contextual relevance – after all, the awareness of a distinct legal methodology is at the heart of the Pure Theory of Law.

Or did the interest in the theoretical roots of the discipline perhaps grow out of the fact that we find ourselves since the beginning of the new millennium in a situation of political upheaval, crisis, and uncertainty, the resolution of which is still unclear when it comes to the future shape of international law? The cosmopolitan project of juridifying and institutionalizing international relations and its concrete emanations has been discussed among legal scholars with renewed – and not uncritical – vigor since the beginning of the new millennium.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Public International Law Theory of Hans Kelsen
Believing in Universal Law
, pp. 233 - 271
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×