As Sounding Brass, or a Tinkling Cymbal? Reflections on the Inaugural Conference of the European Society of International Law

German Law Journal

Volumn 5, Issue 7, 2004, Pages 849-858

  Goodwin, Morag ^a   Kemmerer, Alexandra ^a,b  

^a EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE   (Italy)

^b UNIVERSITY OF WÜRZBURG   (Germany)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 18544374989     PISSN: None     EISSN: 20718322     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S2071832200012888     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. For example, Georg Nolte's UNIDEM conference at Göttingen, 23-24 May 2003. For a report of that conference and its conclusions, see M. Goodwin and P. Zumbansen, American and European Constitutionalism Compared, 4 GERMAN LAW JOURNAL 613 (2003), available at http://www.germanlawjournal. com/pdf/Vol04No06/PDF-Vol-04-No-06-613-627-Legal-Goodwin-Zumbansen.pdf.
2. Pierre-Marie Dupuy's (Paris/Florence) sentiment that the new society should be understood not as a rival to ASIL but rather as a dialogue partner, was not shared by his compatriot Alain Pellet (Paris) nor by Christian Tomuschat (Berlin), both of whom clearly understood ESIL as necessary to act as a bulwark against American hegemonic unilateralism.
3. For an inspired and inspiring discussion of the constitutionalisation of international law against the background of alternative visions of a "New World Order" such as hegemonial liberalism, neoliberal and post-marxist designs and the anti-Kantian project of a Schmittian "Völkerrechtliche Großraumordnung" (international legal order of wide spaces), see J. HABERMAS, Das Kantische Projekt und der gespaltene Westen. Hat die Konstitutionalisierung des Völkerrechts noch eine Chance?, in DER GESPALTENE WESTEN 113 (2004). In his emphatic call for a continuation and renewal of the Kantian project, Habermas refers, inter alia, to B. Fassbender, The United Nations Charter as Constitution of the International Community, 36 COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF TRANSNATIONAL LAW 529 (1998) and J.A. Frowein, Konstitutionalisierung des Völkerrechts, 39 BERICHT DER DEUTSCHEN GESELLSCHAFT FÜR VÖLKERRECHT - VÖLKERRECHT UND INTERNATIONALES RECHT IN EINEM SICH GLOBALISIERENDEN INTERNATIONALEN SYSTEM 427 (2000).
4. In his contribution, Christian Tomuschat highlighted repeatedly the ban on torture in European human rights law and presented a detailed overview of the European Court of Human Right's Jurisprudence on Article 3 ECHR.
5. Having in mind J.H.H. WEILER, UN' EUROPA CRISTIANA (2003) (published in German as EIN CHRISTLICHES EUROPA (2004), this topic, at first, came as a bit of a surprise. [For a first review of Weiler's book in English, see R. Howse, Piety and the Preamble: Joseph Weiler's A CHRISTIAN EUROPE claims a place for Christianity in Europe's proposed new constitution, 3 LEGALAFFAIRS No. 3, 60-62 (May/June 2004); see, also, A. Kemmerer, Geht mit Gott. Europas Verfassung braucht ihn: Was der Jurist Joseph H.H. Weiler vom Papst gelernt hat, FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG, 31 October 2003 (No. 253) at 37]. However, Weiler's argument that international law has still not experienced its "turn to modernity" and has not yet recognised the people as its true subjects instead of focussing on the cloaked power of the sovereign Leviathan, did not miss its point - and finally turned out to be strikingly coherent with Weiler's overall theoretical approach when he introduced the complex structure of the European Union and its inherent principle of "constitutional tolerance" as a model for the discipline of international law.
6. Unsurprisingly, the Europeans were in the numerical majority (255 of 347, i.e. 73.5 %, of all registered conference participants were nationals of the 25 EU Member States, among them 28 participants from the 10 new Member States; 19 participants were nationals of "other European states," i.e. Switzerland, Norway and Turkey), although seemingly chased closely by the Australians (11 participants) and North Americans (21 participants). But the small number of colleagues from the Middle East, Africa, Asia or South America was unfortunate and notable. (All data were provided courtesy of the ESIL secretariat, Academy of European Law, Florence.).
7. For a thorough and multifacetted discussion of Robert Kagan's position, see the contributions by Afsah, Bratspies, Buckel, Dilling, Lotherington, Miller, Paulus, Smith, and Wissel, 4 GERMAN LAW JOURNAL No. 9 (1 September 2003) at www.germanlawjournal.com.
8. In a spirit of egalitarianism, all the speakers - from the world famous to the just starting out - had to apply to take part in these sessions and the selection was based upon the quality of the submittes abstract, which could explain the unexpected absence of a number of high-level European scholars who were perhaps waiting for a personal invitation. The combination of established and unknown made for interesting discussions and will hopefully become an established part of the conference tradition. The decision to include and encourage young scholars at such a high-level forum is to be lauded.
9. One such relationship of remarkable complexity, the relation between EU/EC and UN, was illustrated by Piet Eeckhout in his paper on the legal status in EU Law of UN Security Council Resolutions, largely based on excerpts from P. EECKHOUT, EXTERNAL RELATIONS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION: LEGAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL FOUNDATIONS (2004).
10. I. KANT, ZUM EWIGEN FRIEDEN (1795) or, in English translation, I. KANT, PERPETUAL PEACE AND OTHER ESSAYS (T. Humphrey trans., 1983).
11. J. HABERMAS, Das Kantische Projekt und der gespaltene Westen. Hat die Konstitutionalisierung des Völkerrechts noch eine Chance?, in DER GESPALTENE WESTEN 113 (2004).
12. However, unlike his young fellow (legal) philosophers Fleur Jones (Sydney) and Basak Cali (London), who in Florence emphasized the paradigmatic character of Guantánamo, Jürgen Habermas does not bid an easy farewell to the rule of law, to governance through law, by dwelling extensively upon the State of Exception (a notion he does not even mention). Habermas instead emphatically admonishes the United States to return to internationalism "and to take up again the historical role of a pacemaker on the road of international law's evolution into a cosmopolitan order." J. HABERMAS, Das Kantische Projekt und der gespaltene Westen. Hat die Konstitutionalisierung des Völkerrechts noch eine Chance?, in DER GESPALTENE WESTEN 113, 116 (2004) ("Das Kantische Projekt kann nur dann eine Fortsetzung finden, wenn die USA zu ihrem nach 1918 und nach 1945 vertretenen Internationalismus zurückkehren und erneut die historische Rolle eines Schrittmachers auf dem Weg der Evolution des Völkerrechts zu einem 'weltbürgerlichen Zustand' übernehmen.").
13. See G. AGAMBEN, AUSNAHMEZUSTAND (HOMO SACER II.1) (2004); U. Raulff, Interview with Giorgio Agamben - Life, A Work of Art Without an Author: The State of Exception, the Administration of Disorder and Private Life, 5 GERMAN LAW JOURNAL 609 (2004), available at http://www.germanlawjournal. com/pdf/Vol05No05/PDF-Vol-05-No-05-609-614-special-issue-Raulff-Interview.pdf.
14. See G. AGAMBEN, AUSNAHMEZUSTAND (HOMO SACER II.1) (2004); U. Raulff, Interview with Giorgio Agamben - Life, A Work of Art Without an Author: The State of Exception, the Administration of Disorder and Private Life, 5 GERMAN LAW JOURNAL 609 (2004), available at http://www.germanlawjournal. com/pdf/Vol05No05/PDF-Vol-05-No-05-609-614-special-issue-Raulff-Interview.pdf.
15. The effect of US predominance on the principle of sovereign equality is discussed in detail by Nico Krisch in N. Krisch, More Equal Than the Rest? Hierarchy, Equality and US Predominance in International Law, UNITED STATES HEGEMONY AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 135 (M. Byers and G. Nolte eds., 2003).
16. For example, A. Riles, Aspiration and Control: International Legal Rhetoric and the Essentialization of Culture, 106 HARVARD LAW REVIEW 723, 734 (1993). Basing her analysis upon the writings of the nineteenthcentury international lawyer, the Reverend Thomas J. Lawrence, Riles concluded that, "International law ⋯ is the creative product of its European cultural context, the codification of European norms, and the best hope for the perpetuation of European supremacy."
17. For an exploration of the "ambiguous role of the European Union, an organisation that claims to respect and protect linguistic diversity, but also, by its action or inaction, lets it crumble," see B. de Witte, Language Law of the European Union: Protecting or Eroding Lingustic Diversity?, in CULTURE AND EUROPEAN UNION LAW (R. Craufurd Smith ed., forthcoming); see, also, F.C. Mayer, The Language of the European Constitution - Beyond Babel?, in THE EMERGING CONSTITUTIONAL LAW OF THE EUROPEAN UNION - GERMAN AND POLISH PERSPECTIVES 359-383 (A. Bodnar, M. Kowalski, K. Raible, F. Schorkopf eds., 2003).
18. And this is perhaps no small thing, as maybe the social is indeed the point of all such large-sized conferences.
19. See, e.g., M. KOSKENNIEMI, THE GENTLE CIVILIZER OF NATIONS 516 (2002). In his account of the founding of the Institut de droit international, Koskenniemi draws a detailed picture of the network of international law scholars later known as "men of 1873," among them the Swiss professor Johann Caspar Bluntschli in Heidelberg, one of the founding fathers of the Institut de droit international, and the German- born American Francis Lieber at Columbia Law School in New York. Id. at 11 - 97. The extensive correspondence between these two leading international lawyers of the nineteenth century is an inspiring example of a fruitful transatlantic dialogue contributing to the organization of collective scientific activity in international law. See B. RÖBEN, JOHANN CASPAR BLUNTSCHLI, FRANCIS LIEBER UND DAS MODERNE VÖLKERRECHT 1861 - 1881 (2003).
20. M. KOSKENNIEMI, THE GENTLE CIVILIZER OF NATIONS 515 (2002).
21. For a further discussion of such a constructive form of remembrance, inspired by the German historian Reinhart Koselleck's concept of the "past future," see P. Zumbansen, Die vergangene Zukunft des Völkerrechts, 34 KRITISCHE JUSTIZ 46 (2001).