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Full-Text Articles in Law
How Cosmopolitan Are International Law Professors?, Ryan Scoville, Milan Markovic
How Cosmopolitan Are International Law Professors?, Ryan Scoville, Milan Markovic
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article offers an empirical answer to a question of interest among scholars of comparative international law: why do American views about international law appear at times to differ from those of other countries? We contend that part of the answer lies in legal education. Conducting a survey of the educational and professional backgrounds of nearly 150 legal academics, we reveal evidence that professors of international law in the United States often lack significant foreign legal experience, particularly outside of the West. Sociological research suggests that this tendency leads professors to teach international law from predominantly nationalistic and Western perspectives, …
From Enlightened Positivism To Cosmopolitan Justice: Obstacles And Opportunities, Steven Ratner
From Enlightened Positivism To Cosmopolitan Justice: Obstacles And Opportunities, Steven Ratner
Book Chapters
This paper explores the possibilities for linkages between various forms of positivism accepted by many international lawyers and various forms of cosmopolitanism advocated by scholars of global justice. Building on Bruno Simma's conception of "enlightened positivism," it identifies areas in which cosmopolitan trends have already seeped into the fabric of international law and the key gaps between positivist and cosmopolitan visions of international law and the international community. Emphasizing the contributions that philosophical inquiry can add to international legal scholarship, and vice-versa, it concludes with some thoughts on further integration of cosmopolitan thinking into positivist methodologies.
Between Minimum And Optimum World Public Order: An Ethical Path For The Future, Steven Ratner
Between Minimum And Optimum World Public Order: An Ethical Path For The Future, Steven Ratner
Book Chapters
Among the most significant contributions of policy-oriented jurisprudence to our understanding of international legal process is its identification of minimum and optimum world public order as the overarching goals of international law. Minimum public order in its essence refers to the global state of affairs with limited recourse to unauthorized violence to solve disputes, while optimum public order is synonymous with a world in which human dignity is maximally protected. These two concepts, augmented by other pairings now second-nature to us (for example, authority and control, and myth system and operational code), have also permeated—in the latter case, germinated in—the …