Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:18:17.932Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - International Lawyers, Legal Norms, and Contestations of Legal Validity

from Part III - Meta-theorising, Linkages, and International Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2024

Phil Orchard
Affiliation:
University of Wollongong, New South Wales
Antje Wiener
Affiliation:
Universität Hamburg
Get access

Summary

Contestations about the contents and validity of laws and legal principles are fundamental to the (international) legal profession. After all, when engaging with legal norms, disagreements about their meaning and validity a central part of the day-to-day work of legal professionals specialising in international law, including legal counsel representing governments, international judges, legal officers working for international organisations and non-governmental organisations, and legal academics. We propose a practice-oriented approach to empirically research such interpretive legal contestations by groups of legal professionals. Using an interdisciplinary perspective, we contribute to IR norms research by drawing on not only IR practice theory, but also Bourdieu-inspired research within the Sociology of International Law and ongoing discussions on legal realism in International Legal Theory, including what we have called European New Legal Realism. After outlining how to implement our approach using either a Bourdieusian perspective or the concept of communities of practice, we use normative contestations in and around climate change law to illustrate its added value. Such an approach not only promises to make interpretive legal contestations visible empirically, but also emphasises how interpretive legal contestations matter as they reflect underlying power dynamics and may result in normative legal change in practice.

Type
Chapter
Information
Contesting the World
Norm Research in Theory and Practice
, pp. 182 - 196
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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 [email protected] 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
×