Talking International Law Legal Argumentation Outside the Courtroom

Examining legal argumentation by states and other actors in the settings where it mostly transpires - outside of courts, Talking International Law challenges the realist assumption that legal argumentation is largely inconsequential. Addressing a gap in scholarship within international law and international relations theory, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of why it occurs, how, where, and to what effect by exploring the phenomenon in a range of issue areas, from security and human rights, to the environment, trade, and intellectual property. Diplomats and other governmental actors are the principal participants in international legal discourse, but intergovernmental officials, non-governmental organizations, academics, corporations, and even non-state armed groups also engage in "law talk." Through close examination of legal arguments in political and other settings, the authors uncover various motives these actors have for making legal claims - including persuasion, strategic calculations, assertions of identity, and the felt need to legitimate one's actions - or to delegitimate those of an adversary. Legal argumentation can have short-term and long-term effects, both intended and unintended, on immediate participants or a wider net of actors. By bringing together distinguished scholars with diverse perspectives and senior practitioners from around the world who engage in such argumentation themselves, the book offers a unique exposure to the multi-faceted practice of legal argumentation and thereby deepens our understanding of how international law actually operates in international affairs.

Ian Johnstone is Professor of International Law at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He has served as Dean ad interim and as Academic Dean of the School. Prior to joining Fletcher in 2000, Johnstone served in the United Nations' Office of the Secretary-General. He has held Visiting Professor positions at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, and at New York University School of Law. He has served on the editorial boards of Global Governance and International Organizations Law Review. Steven R. Ratner is the Bruno Simma Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School and the Director of the University of Michigan Donia Human Rights Center. His research addresses a range of issues in international law, including linkages with political philosophy and international relations theory. He has served in U.S. State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser, on expert panels of the UN Secretary-General addressing atrocities in Sri Lanka and Cambodia, in the legal division of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and on the State Department's Advisory Committee on International Law.