Peters on The Rise and Decline of the International Rule of Law and the Job of Scholars @MPILheidelberg

Anne Peters, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, is publishing The Rise and Decline of the International Rule of Law and the Job of Scholars in The International Rule of Law: Rise or Decline (Heike Krieger, George Nolte, and Andreas Zimmermann, eds.). Here is the abstract.

International law feeds on preconditions which it cannot guarantee itself. International scholarship, too, must come to grips with pre-conditions and existing parameters over which it has no control itself. But such scholarship must not ‘succumb’ to these factual and ideational realities by adapting its methods and findings to any given political, social, and economic climate. It is the job of international legal scholars to produce ideas in a spirit of realist utopianism (John Rawls). Depending on the existing parameters, these ideas are apt to shape attitudes and actions, or not. Such scholarship also needs to distance itself from its object of study in order not to lose its capacity to criticise the law and the practice. How far exactly scholarly writing should transcend or keep aloof from the prevailing political climate and from concerns of feasibility depends on the research questions under discussion and is a matter of judgment. The style of scholarship suggested here is illustrated by the work of three eminent scholars whose careers continued through different political eras more or less favourable to the international rule of law: Hersch Lauterpacht, Antonio Cassese, and Josef Kunz.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.