Two fish are swimming in a pond. 'Do you know what?' the fish asks his friend. 'No, tell me.' 'I was talking to a frog the other day. And he told me that we are surrounded by water!' His friend looks at him with great scepticism: 'Water? Whats that? Show me some water!' International lawyers often find themselves focused on the practice of the law rather than the underlying theories. This book is an attempt to stir up 'the water' that international lawyers swim in. It analyses a range of theoretical approaches to international law and invites readers to engage with different ways of legal thinking in order to familiarize themselves with the water all around us, of which we hardly have any perception. The main aim of this book is to provide interested scholars, practitioners, and students of international law and other disciplines with an introduction to various international legal theories, their genealogies, and possible critiques. By providing an analytical approach to international legal theory, the book encourages readers to enhance their sensitivity to these different approaches and to consider how the presuppositions behind each theory affect analysis, research, and practice in international law. International Law Theories is intended to assist students, scholars, and practitioners in reflecting more generally about how knowledge is formed in the field.

Over the past decades international affairs have been increasingly legalized. International law has dramatically expanded into new fields and taken on new challenges. Despite this development, there has been little in-depth scholarship on what impact these changes have had on the field of international legal theory, how it is taught, and where it is going. This volume investigates the major developments in the field and explores the core assumptions and concepts, analytical tools, and key challenges associated with different approaches. An outstanding team of legal academics provides an accessible overview of competing theoretical movements, and a more in-depth understanding of the strengths, preoccupations, insights, and limits of those schools of thought. The contributions provide an authoritative account of current thinking about the theoretical foundations of contemporary international law and will serve as an indispensable resource for students, scholars, and practitioners.

This book discusses the above-mentioned topics from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Review excerpts from the book on Scribd International arbitration readily lends itself to a legal theory analysis. The fundamentally philosophical notions of autonomy and freedom are at the heart of its field of study. Similarly essential are the questions of legitimacy raised by the parties’ freedom to favor a private form of dispute resolution over national courts, to choose their judges, to tailor the procedure and to choose the applicable rules of law, and by the arbitrators’ freedom to determine their own jurisdiction, to shape the conduct of the proceedings and to choose the rules applicable to the dispute. The present work, based on a Course given at The Hague Academy of International Law in the Summer 2007, identifies the philosophical postulates that underlie this field of study and shows their profound coherence and the practical consequences that follow from these postulates in the resolution of international disputes.

Provides an in-depth study of the theory, history, practice, and interpretation of customary international law.

A theoretical analysis of the structure of expropriation in investment law, investigating the foundations for contemporary scholarship and practice.

Using a multi-disciplinary approach, this volume shows how international law shapes behavior.

Nicholas Onuf’s International Legal Theory: Essays and Engagements 1966-2007 is a collection of the author’s articles and book reviews from the period, including some previously unpublished material. The book records the author’s efforts to address important problems in international legal theory and to engage other scholars who were also addressing these problems. As well as demonstrating Onuf’s own constructivist contribution to the theoretical dimension of international law and international relations, each piece is preceded by a short introduction which highlights the wider themes and developments which have occurred in the field of international law in the last forty years.

This book sets out to articulate a comprehensive theory of customary international law that can effectively resolve the conceptual and practical enigmas surrounding it. It takes a multidisciplinary approach and draws insights from international law, legal theory, political science, and game theory. It is anchored in a sophisticated ethical framework and explores the interrelationships between customary international law and ethics.

The book explores the main characteristics of contemporary theory in international law. It examines in an analytical fashion 32 schools, movements, and trends as well as the works of more than 500 authors on substantive issues of international law.