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The Potential of International Law: Fragmentation and Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2011

SAHIB SINGH
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Abstract

Fragmentation discourse provides a rare opportunity for international lawyers to review what has gone and what is to come: it is, in short, a chance to learn lessons of the past. The subjects and the looking glass, so to speak, are the International Law Commission's Report on the Fragmentation of International Law and its author, Martti Koskenniemi. It is the conclusion of this paper that the legal world's approaches to fragmentation, reflected in the ILC Report, represent a deficiency in ethical responsibility. The author not only considers the Report to be naturally inhibited by the institutional environment in which it was constructed, but furthermore finds that the Report's rule-centric approach to a polarized discourse results only in the propagation of ethical deficiencies that define the classical approaches to fragmentation: constitutionalism and legal pluralism. The Report's formalistic approach is one that attempts to find a middle ground between the stated polarities and, in doing so, it not only advances the myths of a system and of coherence in international law, but enables the preferences that define proliferating tribunals. The very same preferences continue to disable the ethical and political emancipation of the legal professional. The author believes the future of international law can no longer remain chained to rule-centrism against political preferences, but rather lies in the study of the legal professional. International law is a project that requires the rediscovery of our consciously enlightened professionals. This not only requires the development of a professional pluralism but the understanding that professional existentialism is not a reward, but rather the transpiring mindset of noble objectives.

Keywords

deformalizationethicsILC Report on FragmentationKoskenniemilegal theory
Type
ARTICLES
Information
Leiden Journal of International Law , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 23 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law 2011

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References

1 M. Koskenniemi, ‘The Fate of Public International Law: Between Technique and Politics’, (2007) 70 MLR 30.

2 See A. Martineau, ‘The Rhetoric of Fragmentation: Fear and Faith in International Law’, (2009) 22 LJIL 1.

3 M. Koskenniemi, ‘Fragmentation of International Law: Difficulties Arising from the Diversification and Expansion of International Law’, Report of the Study Group of the International Law Commission, Finalised by M. Koskenniemi, A/CN.4/L.682 (hereinafter ILC Report or Report).

4 Anger can at various times give rise to irrational revolt, to the antagonism that is inherent in law. Agonistic anger attempts retain the constructiveness in resolving that which causes the anger, much as intended by Mouffe. See Mouffe, C., ‘Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?’, (1999) 66 Social Research 745, at 755Google Scholar.

5 M. Koskenniemi, ‘Constitutionalism as a Mindset: Reflection on Kantian Themes about International Law and Globalisation’, Tel Aviv Conference, 28–30 December 2005, at 4.

6 N. Luhmann, ‘Die Weltgesellschaft’, in N. Luhmann (ed.), Soziologische Aufklärung 2: Aufsätze zur Theorie der Gesellschaft (1971), 51, at 63. For a construction and extension of the Luhmann perspective, see A. Fischer-Lescano and G. Teubner, ‘Regime Collisions: The Vain Search for Legal Unity in the Fragmentation of Global Law’ (trans. M. Everson), (2004) 25 Mich. JIL 999, at 999–1002.

7 For a range of examples of such legal rules that cannot be properly applied by the attendant legal expert, see Koskenniemi, supra note 1, at 9–15.

8 M. Koskenniemi, From Apology to Utopia: The Structure of International Legal Argument: Reissue with a New Epilogue (2005), 606.

9 M. Koskenniemi, ‘Formalism, Fragmentation, Freedom’, speech given on Kantian Themes in Today's International Law in Frankfurt, 25 November 2005, at 17; M. Koskenniemi, ‘International Law: Between Fragmentation and Constitutionalism’, speech, Canberra, 27 November 2006, paras. 3–7, 16, and 26–28. More recently, see M. Koskenniemi, ‘The Politics of International Law: 20 Years Later’, (2009) 20 EJIL 7.

10 Koskenniemi, supra note 5, at 7 (emphasis added).

11 ILC Report, supra note 3, para. 20.

12 See G. Hafner, ‘Risks Ensuing from Fragmentation of International Law’, Official Records of the General Assembly, Fifty-Fifth Session, Supplement No. 10 (A/55/10), Chap. IX.A.I, Annex, at 321.

13 ILC Report, supra note 3, para. 14.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 M. Koskenniemi, ‘International Legislation Today: Limits and Possibilities’, (2005) 23 Wis. ILJ 61, at 64.

17 D. Bederman, The Spirit of International Law (2002), 67.

18 Ibid., para. 7.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid., para. 8 (emphasis added).

21 Ibid., para. 13.

22 Ibid., para. 22.

23 Ibid. (emphasis added).

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid., para. 23.

26 Ibid., para. 15.

27 Koskenniemi, supra note 5, at 1–3; see Koskenniemi, ‘Formalism, Fragmentation, Freedom’, supra note 9, at 14–25; Koskenniemi, ‘International Law’, supra note 9, para. 26 (emphasis in original).

28 This notion of Kant has been used to fuel many of Koskenniemi's forays into stating Kant in critical legal terms.

29 Kennedy, D., ‘The Last Treatise: Project and Person (Reflections on Martti Koskenniemi's From Apology to Utopia)’, (2006) 7 German Law Journal 982, at 985Google Scholar.

30 ILC Report, supra note 3, para. 15.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid., paras. 7–8; see also para. 491.

33 Ibid., para. 12.

34 Ibid., para. 16.

35 Ibid., para. 18 (emphasis added).

36 See P. M. Dupuy, who defines formal unity as ‘essentiellement liée à l'utilisation des mêmes règles secondaires, de reconnaissance, de production et de jugement’, in P. M. Dupuy, ‘L'unité de l'ordre juridique international: Cours général de droit international public’, (2002) 297 RCADI 15, at 39.

37 ILC Report, supra note 3, para. 493.

38 Ibid.

39 See, e.g., A.-M. Slaughter, ‘Toward a Theory of Effective Supranational Adjudication’, (1997) 107 Yale LJ 273; and J. Charney, ‘Is International Law Threatened by Multiple International Tribunals?’, (1999) 271 RCADI 101.

40 H. Thirlway, ‘The Proliferation of International Judicial Organs: Institutional and Substantive Questions: The International Court of Justice and Other International Courts’, in N. Blokker and H. Schermers (eds.), Proliferation of International Organizations (2001), 255, at 266.

41 Koskenniemi, supra note 5, at 10.

42 Ibid., at 9; see also at 7.

43 Miller notes that ‘until the work is done [to thoroughly research the overall coherence of the system, and the extent to which it is really threatened by fragmentation], the complacent and the critic alike will be at a disadvantage’: N. Miller, ‘An International Jurisprudence? The Operation of “Precedent” across International Tribunals’, (2003) 15 LJIL 483, at 526.

44 M. Koskenniemi, ‘Global Legal Pluralism: Multiple Regimes and Multiple Modes of Thought’, speech, Harvard University, 5 March 2005, at 17.

45 Ibid.

46 Koskenniemi, ‘International Law’, supra note 9, para. 18; Koskenniemi, supra note 1, at 16.

47 ILC Conclusions, (1).

48 ILC Report, supra note 3, para. 33.

49 T. Skouteris, Progress in International Law (2010), at 179.

50 ILC Report, supra note 3, para. 493.

51 M. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (trans. A. M. S. Smith) (1990), at 117. The full quotation states: ‘To recognize that they are not the tranquil locus on the basis of which other questions (concerning their structure, coherence, systemicity, transformation) may be posed but they themselves pose a whole cluster of questions (what are they? How can they be defined or limited? What laws do they obey? Which specific phenomena do they give rise to in their field of discourse?). We must recognize that they may not, in the last resort, be what they seem at first sight. In short, they require a theory, and that this theory cannot be constructed unless the field of the facts of discourse on the basis of which those facts are built up appears in its non-synthetic unity. Once this is done, an entire field is set free’ (emphasis added). Many thanks to Thomas Skouteris for highlighting the import of this statement; Skouteris, supra note 49, at 195.

52 ILC Report, supra note 3, para. 20.

53 Ibid., fns. 29, 32, 33, and 35.

54 Ibid., para. 27.

55 Ibid., para. 35.

56 Ibid., para. 33.

57 Ibid., para. 35.

58 Ibid. (emphasis added).

59 Ibid., para. 34.

60 Ibid.

61 See generally on the distinction J. Habermas, Justification and Application (trans. C. P. Cronin) (1993).

62 ILC Report, supra note 3, para. 491.

63 M. Del Mar, ‘System Values and Understanding Legal Language’, (2008) 21 LIJL 29, at 39–57.

64 Koskenniemi, supra note 8, at 602.

65 Koskenniemi, supra note 1, at 28; Koskenniemi, ‘International Law’, supra note 9, para. 24.

66 Lacey, N., ‘H. L. A. Hart's Rule of Law: The Limits of Philosophy in Historical Perspective’, (2007) 36 Quademi Fiorentini 1203, at 1205–6 and 1208Google Scholar.

67 M. Koskenniemi, ‘Between Empire and Legal Formalism’, Speech at Recife, Brazil, 18 May 2003, at 9.

68 J. A. Beckett, ‘Rebel Without a Cause? Martti Koskenniemi and the Critical Legal Project’, (2006) 7 GLJ 1045, at 1072.

69 Accordingly, note the observations of Scobbie: ‘interpretation may . . . have recourse to values already embodied with the system to determine which interpretation best makes sense systemically’: I. Scobbie, ‘Towards the Elimination of International Law: Some Radical Scepticism about Sceptical Radicalism’, (1990) 61 BYIL 339, at 349.

70 M. Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civiliser of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960 (2001), 104.

71 See Beckett, supra note 68, at 1059, for this label.

72 D. Kennedy, ‘Legal Formalism’, in N. J. Smelser and P. B. Baltes (eds.), 13 Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (2001), 8634, at 8637.

73 Koskenniemi, supra note 67, at 616; Koskenniemi, supra note 70, at 494–509.

74 Koskenniemi, supra note 8, at 606.

75 Ibid., at 616 (emphasis added).

76 Koskenniemi, supra note 70, at 500 (emphasis added).

77 Koskenniemi, supra note 67, at 18.

78 Ibid.

79 ILC Report, supra note 3, para. 20.

80 Ibid., para. 487.

81 Ibid. (emphasis added).

82 Ibid., para. 493 (emphasis added).

83 Koskenniemi, supra note 5, at 10.

84 Ibid., at 23–4.

85 ILC Report, supra note 3, para. 488.

86 Beckett, supra note 68, at 1069 (emphasis added).

87 O. Korhonen and T. Skouteris, ‘Under Rhodes Eye: The “Old” and the “New” International Law at Looking Distance’, (1998) 11 LJIL 429, at 431.

88 A. Boldizar and O. Korhonen, ‘Ethics, Morals and International Law’, (1999) 10 EJIL 279, at 310.

89 See generally M. Horkheimer, Critical Theory (1982).

90 Beckett, supra note 68, at 1046.

91 See Koskenniemi, supra note 1, at 25–30; Koskenniemi, ‘International Law’, supra note 9, paras. 24–30; Koskenniemi, supra note 5, at 1; Koskenniemi, ‘Formalism, Fragmentation, Freedom’, supra note 9, at 2–4.

92 Koskenniemi, ‘International Law’, supra note 9, para. 24.

93 Koskenniemi, supra note 1.

94 Koskenniemi, supra note 5, at 22.

95 Koskenniemi's use of the moral politician is to be contrasted with this use of the political moralist: ‘If the political moralist looks beyond the law in order to reach happiness, others are reduced to instruments of his own desire. The more he insists he will thereby also provide for the happiness of others, the less he is able to think of those others as free. Against these, Kant puts the “moral politician.” This is the formalist whose fidelity is to the law, not to its hypothesised purposes, the law understood as the “sum of the conditions under which the choice of one can be united with the choice of another in accordance with the universal law of freedom‘”: Koskenniemi, ‘International Law’, supra note 9, paras. 27–28; Koskenniemi, ‘Formalism, Fragmentation, Freedom’, supra note 9, at 17.

96 Beckett, supra note 68, at 1070.

97 I. Kant, Metaphysics of Morals (ed. M. J. Gregor ed.) (1996), at 24.

98 Koskenniemi, supra note 70, at 502.

99 Koskenniemi, ‘Formalism, Fragmentation, Freedom’, supra note 9, at 24–5.

100 ‘Critique would essentially insure the desubjugation of the subject in the context of what we could call, in a word, the politics of truth’: Koskenniemi, supra note 5, at 25.

101 As stated by Pierre Schlag, ‘it is not enough to become self-conscious of the systemic process . . . . What is required is displacement, a subversion of the discursive practices that constitute each one of us. What is required is deconstruction’, P. Schlag, ‘“Le Hors de Texte, C'Est Moi”: The Politics of Form and the Domestication of Deconstruction’, (1990) 11 Cardozo L. Rev. 1631, at 1640.

102 I would like to thank Paavo Kotiaho on this point. The paper on which this consideration is made is on file with the author: P. Kotiaho, ‘The Call for a “Culture of Formalism”: Vice or Virtue? A Genealogy of Koskenniemi's Critical Project’.

103 See Pogge, T., ‘The Influence of the Global World Order on the Prospects of Genuine Democracy in the Developing Countries’, (2001) 14 Ratio Juris 326CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 334–43.

104 See J. P. Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism (trans. P. Mariet) (1948).

105 M. Foucault, ‘Iran: The Spirit of a World without Spirit’, in L. Kritzman (ed.), Michel Foucault: Politics, Philosophy, Culture (1988), at 214.

106 M. Foucault, ‘A quoi rêvent les Iraniens?’, in Dits et écrits, Vol. 3, at 694.

107 M. Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (trans. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills) (1946), 357.