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Conclusion

Tyranny and the Global Legal Order

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2021

Aoife O'Donoghue
Affiliation:
Durham Law School
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Summary

Across the works of William Blake Urizen is at once Jupiter, Jehovah, an Assyrian warrior and George III.1 Urizen uses guises of temperance, prudence, justice, fortitude and, occasionally, madness, to preserve his power.2 Urizen employs an array of tyrannical techniques but in each manifestation is a tyrant. Orc confronts Urizen in each of these guises, challenging tradition and nostalgia with revolution and revival. But the cycle of tyranny and tyrannicide must end, and we only find a resolution in a new order unrestrained by nostalgia for former tyrannical structures. Nostalgia for a history ensconced in authority and power must be replaced by a broad and complex public sphere filled with contestation and a governance order that heeds and responds to those it governs. To end Urizen’s tyrannical authority, we must pose unaskable questions. This book has therefore posed one such question: does tyranny lurk within the global legal order? The answer is yes. International law is not uniquely immune from tyranny. But having made that determination, international law must remove itself from any nostalgia for its (tyrannical) past and entrench contestation into a novel structure that takes both the scale(s) of its operation and its embeddedness into the everyday lives of individuals as fundamental to its self-understanding.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Conclusion
  • Aoife O'Donoghue
  • Book: On Tyranny and the Global Legal Order
  • Online publication: 24 September 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108689434.007
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  • Conclusion
  • Aoife O'Donoghue
  • Book: On Tyranny and the Global Legal Order
  • Online publication: 24 September 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108689434.007
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.

  • Conclusion
  • Aoife O'Donoghue
  • Book: On Tyranny and the Global Legal Order
  • Online publication: 24 September 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108689434.007
Available formats
×