Abstract
Much has been written about the interaction between international law and the political in recent decades. Yet, there has been limited attention on how centring the cognition of the international on each of these leads to radically different orders. This thesis seeks to address this gap by asking if it is plausible to view international law as prevailing over states’ sovereign power to mitigate political violence. I argue that an international political theory to respond to this challenge can be pieced together from a constructivist reading of Hans Kelsen’s legal cosmopolitanism, in which states stem from a global legal system, supported by Hans Morgenthau's classical realism. The thesis shows the compatibility of Kelsen’s inherent realism with Morgenthau’s normative construct, both aiming to achieve practical goals, namely a relatively peaceful world and human freedom, through a pluralist cognition of the international.The political, embodying the supreme freedom of states, is exposed as a normative ideal. Such ideal can lead to deeply different conceptions of the international depending on its construction; whether it is solely driven by power as in Schmitt’s conception of the political or, alternatively, constrained by other norms. The latter is compatible with Kelsen’s normativism, which seeks to moderate inherent human subjectivity with an integral cognition of the world under international law. This is not an empirical or logical necessity but rather a moral and practical choice based on the hypothesis that a more peaceful international order can emerge from it. Still, these prescriptions cannot obtain if they are ineffective and cannot last if they lack adaptability to change.
Change is central both to the objections against and the arguments for international law. As norm-based arguments construct and challenge international orders, international law provides a credible shared practice instead of political violence. The preservation of such shared practice, however, is dependent on a predominance of power, revealing the fragile interdependence between the Normative and the Political. The alternative to this fine balance, however, is a practice of sovereignty unrestrained by normativity and pervaded by political violence. Ultimately, not only it is plausible to opt for a cognition of the international centred on international law’s primacy, but there are persuasive reasons to do so.
Date of Award | 1 Sept 2024 |
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Original language | English |
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Supervisor | Ned Lebow (Supervisor) & Christoph Kletzer (Supervisor) |