International relations theory and international law: a critical approach

2011 ◽  
Vol 48 (12) ◽  
pp. 48-7179-48-7179
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Critical Approach

scholarly journals International Law and International Relations Theory: A New Generation of Interdisciplinary Scholarship

1998 ◽  
Vol 92 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Slaughter ◽  
Andrew S. Tulumello ◽  
Stepan Wood
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Regime Theory ◽  
Joint Research ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
American Society ◽  
Interdisciplinary Scholarship ◽  
United Nations System ◽  
Year 2000

Nine years ago, Kenneth Abbott published an article exhorting international lawyers to read and master regime theory, arguing that it had multiple uses for the study of international law. He went as far as to call for a “joint discipline” that would bridge the gap between international relations theory (IR) and international law (IL). Several years later, one of us followed suit with an article mapping the history of the two fields and setting forth an agenda for joint research. Since then, political scientists and international lawyers have been reading and drawing on one another’s work with increasing frequency and for a wide range of purposes. Explicitly interdisciplinary articles have won the Francis Deák Prize, awarded for the best work by a younger scholar in this Journal, for the past two years running; the publication of an interdisciplinary analysis of treaty law in the Harvard International Law Journal prompted a lively exchange on the need to pay attention to legal as well as political details; and the Hague Academy of International Law has scheduled a short course on international law and international relations for its millennial lectures in the year 2000. Further, the American Society of International Law and the Academic Council on the United Nations System sponsor joint summer workshops explicidy designed to bring young IR and IL scholars together to explore the overlap between their disciplines.

The Noble American Science of Imperial Relations and Its Laws of Race Development

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-42
Author(s):  
Robert Vitalis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
American Science ◽  
The Way

We now know that the ‘birth of the discipline’ of international relations in the United States is a story about empire. The foundations of early international relations theory are set in not just international law and historical sociology but evolutionary biology and racial anthropology. The problem is the way in which scholars today deal with the place of race in the thought of John Hobson, Paul Reinsch, and virtually all other social scientists of the era. The strand of thought that still resonates in our own time about empire, states, and the like is raised up and depicted as the scientific or theoretical core in the scholars’ work, while the strand that involves now archaic racial constructs is downgraded and treated instead as mere ‘language’, ‘metaphors’, and ‘prejudices’ of the era. To undo this error and recover in full the ideas of early international relations theorists it is necessary to bring the work of historians of conservative and reform Darwinism to bear on the first specialists and foundational texts in international relations.

International Relations Theory, International Law, and the Regime Governing Atrocities in Internal Conflicts

1999 ◽  
Vol 93 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth W. Abbott
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Internal Conflicts ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Cross Fertilization

Over the last ten years, international relations (IR) theory, a branch of political science, has animated some of the most exciting scholarship in international law.1 If a true joint discipline has not yet emerged,2 scholars in both fields have clearly established the value of interdisciplinary cross-fertilization. Yet IR—like international law—comprises several distinct theoretical approaches or “methods.” While this complexity makes interactions between the disciplines especially rich, it also makes them difficult to explore concisely. This essay thus constitutes something of a minisymposium in itself: it summarizes the four principal schools of IR theory—conventionally identified as “realist,” “institutionalist,” “liberal” and “constructivist”—and then applies them to the norms and institutions governing serious violations of human dignity during internal conflicts (the “atrocities regime”).

Norms of Self-Determination: Thinking Sovereignty Through

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 195-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Scott
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Third World ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Way

This essay is an exploration of the contemporary normative conditions of thinking about the problem of sovereignty. Specifically it is a consideration of some aspects of the way in which the problem of Third World sovereignty has been taken up and argued out in international relations theory and international law on the legal-political terrain of self-determination. The essay traces the transformation of the norm of self-determination as an anti-colonial standard to its post-Cold War re-composition as a norm of democratic governance.

Why Comparative International Law Needs International Relations Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Abebe
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter challenges the conventional wisdom that international relations theory has nothing to offer scholars interested in comparative international law. It argues that comparativists should not underestimate the value of international relations theory in explaining how and why certain states adopt particular interpretations of international law. While international relations theory cannot explain the evolution of specific doctrines, it can be very useful in understanding the general approaches to international law that states embrace. The chapter develops the connection between domestic institutional design and the interpretation of international law on one side, and realism, institutionalism, and liberalism on the other. It argues that greater consideration of the relationship among power, domestic institutional design, and international relations theory paradigms will not only prove fruitful for the comparative international law project but also for those thinking about the aims of international law and the operation of international politics.

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