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New York University Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers 4-4-2005 New York University School of Law

The International Legal Order

Benedict W. Kingsbury

New York University School of Law, benedict.kingsbury@nyu.edu

Recommended Citation

Kingsbury, Benedict W., "The International Legal Order " (2005). New York University Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers. Paper 6. http://lsr.nellco.org/nyu_plltwp/6

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ISSN: 1552-6275 © Benedict Kingsbury New York University School of Law New York, NY 10012 U.S.A.

Cite as: IILJ Working Paper 2003/1 (History and Theory of International Law Series) (www.iilj.org)

THE INTERNATIONAL LEGAL ORDER Benedict Kingsbury

Controversiae (disputes) is the first word in book I of Hugo Grotius’ foundational text De Jure Belli ac Pacis (The Law of War and Peace, 1625). Much modern scholarship in international law has followed this strand of Grotius’ thought in orienting the subject to the problem of managing disputes. Since the late nineteenth century, generations of leading scholarpractitioners have shaped a view of international law which emphasizes legal doctrines and materials related to disputes: the specific rules one party to a dispute may invoke against another, the sources (e.g. treaty, custom) to which an international court will look to identify international law rules, the general principles (e.g. acquiescence, abuse of rights) that international courts have borrowed from national legal...