Jens Bartelson
Professor
The language of law and the laws of language
Författare
Summary, in English
The Status of Law in World Society by Friedrich Kratochwil is a sophisticated attempt to reassert the importance of international law in a globalised world by grounding it in the actual practices of legal reasoning. Yet this attempt to ground normativity in practice strikes me as problematic. As I shall argue, what law is cannot be determined with reference to legal practices only, but will depend on the fulfillment of certain background requirements which themselves stand in need of further justification. Thus the recourse to linguistic practice is beset by an ambivalence that stems from the fact that language and law always already are intertwined, an ambivalence that cannot therefore be overcome with recourse to either. If it is the case that law has a language of its own, we must also be prepared to admit that language has its own laws. What then is gained by the recourse to linguistic practice is not so much a resolution but rather a temporary displacement of indeterminacy from the realm of law to that of language.
Avdelning/ar
- Statsvetenskapliga institutionen
Publiceringsår
2016-01-01
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
250-257
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Millennium
Volym
44
Issue
2
Fulltext
- Available as PDF - 299 kB
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Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
Millennium Publishing Group
Ämne
- Law and Society
Nyckelord
- Foundationalism
- International law
- Linguistic turn
- Practice
Aktiv
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 0305-8298