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Notes
‘Don’t ask me for formulas to open worlds for you: all I have are gnarled syllables, branch-dry. All I can tell you now is this: what we are not, what we do not want’. Translation by W. Arrowsmith, in E. Montale, Cuttlefish Bones (1994).
About the concept of hope and its rationality, see Pettit 2004.
According to Kennedy (2011), this overlap between description and prescription, theory and practice, conceptual analysis and critical reform, is probably a typical trait of the post-realist legal scholarship.
This is the case, according to Condorelli (2012: 156), of the hope for a future judicial review of the UN Security Council resolutions.
As underlined by Mégret (2012: 75), from an idealist perspective, “[i]nternational law is, in a sense, because it must be”.
When we believe, for certain, that something will not happen, there is no room for rational hope: this belief belongs to the typical (irrational) utopian domain. See Pettit 2004: 154.
Feichtner 2012: 1157.
Peters 2013: 552.
Johns 2009: 5. About the liberal mainstream in international legal scholarship, see Kennedy 2011.
Cassese 2012a. There is no room here for a full reconstruction of Cassese’s theory. Nonetheless, the book itself and the articles recently published on the topic – see Feichtner 2012, Peters 2013, and Ruiz Fabri 2012 – are clear and rich enough to offer a general idea of his reformist approach. In this article, I shall spend some more lines on the reconstruction of the Dworkinian approach to international law, not only because it is less known amongst internationalist scholars than Cassese’s works, but also because it shares some form of optimism with Cassese.
Mégret 2012: 79-80.
Lauterpacht 2011: 440. As pointed out by Paz (2012a: 242), Lauterpacht’s extension of “the tradition of the ʻrule of lawʼ … to the international level” is perfectly understandable. About the problem of the transplantation syndrome, see Puppo (2012: 220), and, about Dworkin’s philosophy of international law specifically, see Jovanović (2015: 451-453) and Çali (2009: 822).
It is probably not true that the domestic analogy is constitutive of the reformist approach. I recognise this point as long as it is not always true that the reformist scholar bases her approach on the domestic analogy. Nevertheless, it is still true that, from Kelsen through Lauterpacht to Cassese, the ideal which is supposed to inspire the reform of international law is constructed on the basis of the best expressions of domestic law, that is, the constitutional state. In other words, as long as the reformist takes the train of global constitutionalism, it is difficult to deny that such a train is moved (or has historically been moved) by a domestic locomotive.
In the last section, I shall take into account the philosophy of international law proposed by Dworkin (2013) as an example of both the domestic analogy and utopianism.
Schauer 1991.
The deep relation between the technique of stare decisis and the value of stability is stressed by Schauer (2012: 43-44) and Waldron (2012).
About the actual tendency towards deformalisation, and the need for rejuvenating and revitalising a formalist approach (in law-ascertainment), see d’Aspremont 2011a.
The distinction between deep and surface conventions has recently been introduced in analytical legal theory by Marmor 2009. The same intuition, perhaps most articulated, was formulated by Tuori (1997) and developed by Siltala (2000: 151-267). For a deeper analysis of this concept, its relation to the rule of law, and an extensive bibliography, see Puppo 2011.
See d’Aspremont 2011, resting his formalist approach to the practice of law-ascertainment on the positivistic sources thesis.
See Llewellyn 1960.
It should be noted that, contrary to the reading of American realism divulged by Hart (1994: ch. 7), Schauer (2011) suggests that Llewellyn has never doubted the possibility for judges to decide on the basis of pre-existing rules.
In this sense, a pathological legal system is still an instantiation of what we could call ‘law’, but it does not fulfil the requirements of the rule of law.
About the classical distinction between formalist and substantive conceptions, see Craig (1997).
Dicey 1915. According to Dyzenhaus (1999: 10), “[i]n the public law model of England and in those legal orders which follow the English model, the most influential understanding of the rule of law remains that put forward in 1885 by Albert Venn Dicey”.
See Chesterman 2008; Besson 2010: 172; Buchanan 2010: 89; Tasioulas 2010: 115.
See Waldron 2012; Schauer 2012: 30-55; MacCormick 1999: 165. The same conception – as stated by Dyzenhaus (1996: 644) – is implicit in Weber’s rational authority: “all that legal order can do is to make social life relatively stable by making it to a large extent certain and predictable”.
Dicey 1915: 198.
Dicey 1915: 189.
Waldron 2011: 316-317.
Morgenthau opposes disputes and tensions. On this distinction, elaborated in his doctoral dissertation and refined in Morgenthau 1948: 342-349, see Jütersonke (2012: 51 and Scheuerman (2008: 38). A tension is a situation “involving a discrepancy, asserted by one state against another, between the legal situation on the one hand and the actual power relation on the other”. Jütersonke 2012: 55 (quoting Hans Morgenthau, Die internationale Rechtspflege, ihr Wesen und ihre Grenzen, 71).
Von Bogdandy & Venzke 2013: 52.
Von Bogdandy & Venzke 2013: 63-68.
See, as a paradigmatic example, Cassese (2012b: 170) and the penetrating analysis by Ruiz Fabri (2012: 1053). According to Mégret (2012: 75-76), “[t]his idea that there is something prior – and, unmistakably, higher – than the state is the defining mark of idealism, and is particularly apparent in contemporary discourse that emphasizes the importance of human rights, for example, as a basic precondition of legitimate statehood”.
It is possible to consider jus cogens norms in a different way: such norms work as the ultimate criterion of validity, and it is precisely due to this that they contribute to the enhancement of determinacy at the international level. This would be true if international courts determined the content of such norms effectively. This is the thinking, I guess, of many international scholars insisting on the positive contribution of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Law Commission on the Responsibility of States to determining the content of jus cogens norms. I could agree with this statement if the judicial international context was limited to the ICJ and the European Court of Human Rights. But, if one takes into account the contribution of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights – which attributes the status of ius cogens to an increasing quantity of norms – the resulting panorama is nearer to what I claim in this paper than to the one considered by such optimistic opinion.
Shapiro 2010.
Schauer 2012: 30. See also Leiter 2010.
About the international theory side, see Koskenniemi 2006 and d’Aspremont 2011a. On a purely theoretical point of view, see Shapiro 2010, Marmor 2009 and Schauer 2012.
Schauer 2012.
To the extent that the most relevant social practice, from the positivist perspective shared by d’Aspremont (2011a: 51-62), is a judicial practice, I think that switching from formalism in law-ascertainment to formalism in judicial decision-making is not an arbitrary move.
See Schauer 1991: 17 and 47 (on the entrenched feature).
Schauer 2012: 191.
About the distinction between the two models, see Schauer 1991: 51.
Schauer 1991: 30.
Koskenniemi 2006: 591.
Shapiro 2010.
Hayek 2007: 112.
Raz 1979a: 214. In some way, according to Raz, (a formalist conception of) the rule of law is the virtue that can limit the dangers of both naked power and morality. On that, see also Koskenniemi (2002: 174), referring to a turn to ethics in international law: “In such a situation, insistence on rules, processes, and the whole culture of formalism now turns into a strategy of resistance”. This is so because “formalism is precisely about setting limits to the impulses – ‘moral’ or not – of those in decision-making positions in order to fulfill general, instead of particular, interests.”
Waldron 2012: 28. See also Beckett (2006: 1068), who reconstructs Koskenniemi’s neo-formalism: “Although any given legal norm can bear any desired meaning, the only formally valid interpretations are those capable of universalisation, of repetition.”
Schauer 2012: 35.
Atria 1999: 82.
See Hart 1983: 138, where he classifies Llewellyn’s realist conception of adjudication closer to the noble dream than to the nightmare.
See Solum 1987.
Beckett 2005: 224.
See Raz 1979b.
See Puppo 2017.
See Hare 1952.
Beckett 2006: 1069.
Jouannet 2007: 386. In that sense, “‘[f]ormal’ does not mean ‘vacuous’ […]; formal law always formalizes a particular content or subject-matter”.
Singer 1984.
See Koskenniemi 2002b: 174.
Kelsen 1947: 171. Elsewhere (Puppo 2016), I develop Kelsen’s rich and ambiguous stance on the Nuremberg Trials and his eventual departure from positivism. In a nutshell: even if Kelsen (1945) clearly defends the humanity-based decision, he does not try to do this – contrary to many international positivist scholars – from a positivist perspective (see Garibian 2007). Such an attempt would have, I guess, perverted the deep value (legality or the rule of law) justifying the positive legal system. The decisions were just, but they had no legal justification, they only had a moral one. In this way, Kelsen does not renounce his methodological positivism, which assumes, at the very least, a distinction between the law that is and the law that we desire. Nevertheless, neither does he adhere to an ideological form of positivism (or ethical legalism), according to which what is legal is also morally correct, and so it has to be obeyed. The law of the Nazi was (probably) legal and the law of Nuremberg was (probably) illegal, but there were strong moral reasons for preferring, in this case, illegality to legality. To defend the Nuremberg rulings on the basis of (an argument derived from) positive law would have threatened that which makes positive law be something valuable. More generally, on Kelsen’s blurred lines between the purity of theory and the pacifism of ideology, see Puppo 2015.
Koskenniemi 2002b: 170.
On the relation between the rule-based model and discretion, see Schauer 1991: 190.
See Hart 1994: 253.
Hart 1994: 272-273.
Transparency is, therefore, an essential feature of the culture of formalism. See Jouannet (2010: 294) and Paulus (2010: 209). An example of a thick formal-procedural conception would be the conception proposed by Waldron. See Section 2 of this paper.
See respectively: Ferrini v Germany, Italian Court of Cassation, No. 5044/2004, 11 March 2004 reported in (2006) International Law Reports (128) 658 (“Ferrini”); Jurisdictional Immunities of the State (Germany v Italy; Greece Intervening) (Judgment) (International Court of Justice, General List No. 143, 3 February 2012) [28]. Note that recently, in October 2014, the Italian Constitutional Court decided that the Italian Statute imposing the execution of the UN Charter is unconstitutional in the part in which it establishes “the obligation to Italian courts to comply with the ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of 3 February 2012, which requires that jurisdiction in cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by a foreign state be declined” (URL: http://www.cortecostituzionale.it/actionSchedaPronuncia.do?anno=2014&numero=238).
Koskenniemi 2006: 590. Another way of stressing radical indeterminacy is by recalling the deep paradoxical character that international law has been exhibiting since its very beginnings. On this topic, see Jouannet (2007: 379): “international law, past and present, is the reflection of a particular – Western – culture, whilst at the same time claiming not only to internationalize but also to almost universalize the values that it conveys”.
Koskenniemi 2006: 159.
Leiter (2010: 128) confirms the same about the US: “formalism [...] is quite obviously the official story about adjudication in the public culture in the United States”.
The best way of fulfilling this duty is probably through what Llewellyn (1960) calls the Grand Style of judicial decision-making, that is, a judicial style perfectly in accord with the “standards of legality [...] deeply rooted in the institutional history and tradition of a political community” (Jovanović 2015: 452) and clearly absent from the international community.
Koskenniemi 2002a: 199. For a brilliant analysis of the contribution of Jewish German-speaking scholars to international law, see Paz 2012a.
Paz 2012b: 423.
Morgenthau 1940: 271.
Shapiro 2010: 170. The same idea was already formulated by MacCormick (1994: 6): “one vital point of legal institutions is exactly that they exist (inter alia) to settle authoritatively for practical purposes what cannot be settled morally”.
Koskenniemi 2002b: 169.
Koskenniemi 2012b: 165.
About the problem of uncertainty in customary law, see Kammerhofer 2010.
See d’Aspremont 2011b: 517-518.
It seems to me that Cassese (2012b: 164), in approaching the issue of identifying jus cogens norms by international judges, implicitly adopts a formalist-like point of view.
About the bombing of Serbia, see Koskenniemi 2002b: 171. See also Anghie (2005: 314), who argues that “international law is in a permanent state of emergency”. About the relation between the state of exception and the rule of law, see Puppo 2013.
According to Freud (1962: 11), who borrows the expression from his friend Romain Rolland, an oceanic feeling is “a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded – as it were, ʻoceanicʼ. This feeling [...] is a purely subjective fact, not an article of faith; it brings with it no assurance of personal immortality, but it is the source of the religious energy which is seized upon by the various Churches and religious systems [...]. One may [...] rightly call oneself religious on the ground of this oceanic feeling alone, even if one rejects every belief and every illusion”. This notion of “oceanic feeling” is related to religions, but could also, more interestingly, be associated with a quasi-religious theme, such as international law. On this matter, see Koskenniemi (2012: 11): “Although the ʻoceanic feelingʼ may certainly be real to the extent that the speaker actually feels it, this is no proof of its universal reality, either in terms of being available to others, or its having some objective presence in the world.” Not surprisingly, Dworkin takes very seriously the notion of jus cogens and quotes judge Cassese as an example of “the moralized approach to international law that [Dworkin is] now defending” (Dworkin, 2013: 26).
See Feichtner 2012: 1152.
Feichtner 2012: 1152; see also Kratochvil (2000: 42), who recalls that “neither a constitutional text nor a doctrine of stare decisis apply in international law”; Beckett (2001: 635): “the role of law, and the avoidance of radical indeterminacy in the Dworkinian analysis are all predicated on the centrality of the courts, or at least on the possibility of unilateral recourse to the courts. Dworkin relies on the courts to stabilize the law (and thus authoritatively determine which values are in the system), but in PIL they simply cannot play this role.” While it is plausible that the requirement of relative stability can generate, in a domestic context, and this according to Dworkin, some kind of associative obligation, “it is doubtful, to say the least, whether, first, states can meet those psychological requirements, even through their legitimate representatives, and second, whether, even under this assumption, we can meaningfully speak of a sort of international community that generates associative obligations in the Dworkinian sense of the word” (Jovanović, 2015: 454).
Scheuerman 2008: 38.
On the anti-positivistic claim and on the conflict between human rights and sovereignty respectively, see Dworkin 2013: 5 and 17-19.
Jovanović 2015: 447.
Dworkin 2013: 14.
Dworkin 2013: 23-26.
Dworkin 2013: 26.
For several examples in which it seems that rules do not play a significant role in international issues, see Johns 2013.
For many striking examples of international events, see Johns, Joyce & Pahuja 2011.
See Corte Costituzionale, Sentenza n. 248/2014, in which the sequence of the Italian judicial and legislative interventions is reconstructed.
Morgenthau 1947: 129.
Koskenniemi 2006: 591.
I have to acknowledge that the United Nations aim to guarantee international peace and security, which is comparable to social stability at the domestic level. Nevertheless, this statement has to be relativised both at the empirical and the normative level. Empirically, it is a fact that an international intervention with the purpose of re-establishing peace and security can be stopped by a veto, so that the states that have the right to stop such interventions can maximise their freedom, and so threats against peace and security remain actual. In other words, without a serious reform of the functioning of the UN Security Council, the argument is not convincing. The reason why such a reform has not been introduced is precisely because it would reduce the freedom of some states. In this sense, the empirical difficulty has to be understood to be the result of a normative stance aimed at protecting the liberty of states, or at least of some powerful states.
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