The Nature of International Law

The Nature of International Law provides a comprehensive analytical account of international law within the prototype theory of concepts.

Miodrag A. Jovanovi? (Author)

9781108473330, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 April 2019

284 pages
23.4 x 15.5 x 1.9 cm, 0.53 kg

'Legal philosophers have too often ignored international law as irrelevant, or because it is an embarrassment to their theories. In his innovate new book, The Nature of International Law, Miodrag Jovanovi? properly brings international law back to the center of jurisprudential inquiry. As important, Jovanovi? offers an important challenge to, and alternative to, conceptual analysis, in his prototype theory.' Brian H. Bix, Frederick W. Thomas Professor of Law and Philosophy, University of Minnesota

Jurisprudence has up until recently largely neglected international law as a subject of philosophizing. The Nature of International Law tries to offset against this deficiency by providing a comprehensive explanatory account of international law. It does so within an analytical tradition, albeit within the one which departs from the nowadays dominant method of the metaphysically-driven conceptual analysis. Instead, it adopts the prototype theory of concepts, which is directed towards determining typical features constitutive of the nature of international law. The book's central finding is that those features are: normativity, institutionalization, coercive guaranteeing, and justice-aptness. Since typical features are context sensitive, their specificities at the international level are further elucidated. The book, finally, challenges the often raised claim that fragmentation is international law's unique feature by demonstrating that international institutional actors, particularly adjudicative ones, largely perceive themselves as officials of a unified legal order.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. International Law as a Subject Matter of Legal Philosophy – A Brief Historical Overview: 1. Early theorizing about law beyond the state – Ancient Greece and Rome
2. Natural law theory and the birth of international legal scholarship – Grotius, Pufendorf and Hobbes
3. The German public law turn
4. Classical analytical jurisprudence: the rise of skepticism towards international law
5. Twentieth century legal positivism on international law
6. Revived jurisprudential interest in international law
Part II. In Search of the Nature of (International) Law – Methodological Postulates: 7. Grasping 'analytical' in the analytical approach
8. Challenges to the conceptual analysis
9. Beyond the conceptual analysis? The prototype theory of concepts and the nature of law
Part III. Typical Features of (International) Law: 10. The central case of law (as a genre)
11. Typical features of (international) law – preliminary finding
Part IV. International Law as a Normative Order: 12. Epistemological perspective – how are we to ascertain a norm
13. Epistemological perspective at the international level – on formal sources of international law
14. Perspective of practical rationality – how norms provide reasons for action
15. Perspective of practical rationality at the international level
Part V. International Law as an Institutionalized and (Coercively) Guaranteed Order: 16. Institutionalization of the international order
17. Institutions of international law
18. (Coercive) guarantees in international law
Part VI. Justice-Aptness of International Law: 19. Allocative conflicts and international law-making
20. Rectificatory justice and international law-application
Part VII. Fragmentation – A Special Feature of International Law?: 21. Hart's lens of 'systematicity'
22. The ILC's lens of 'fragmentation'
23. The 'as if' lens of international law's unity
In lieu of a conclusion – a note on (un)certainty.

Subject Areas: Public international law [LBB], International law [LB], Jurisprudence & philosophy of law [LAB], Jurisprudence & general issues [LA], Law [L]