Positivism and International Law

Program of the Webinar

Zoom Webinar, 25 January 2021, 15:00–18:00 (CET)

International law does not often get into the spotlight of legal philosophy. As a result, there is a significant conceptual and methodological gap between legal positivism known jurisprudentially which deals primarily with how domestic legal systems function, and international legal positivism, which has recently been under many attacks as too formalistic and orthodoxic. This discrepancy between two versions of positivism, their agendas, focuses, and key premises, is a consequence of the current practice of the legal discipline, when legal philosophers and international lawyers seldom have a common space to talk to each other. This webinar is an attempt to address this deficiency.

The webinar is designed to provide for the opportunity for a conversation. Three one-hour panels will discuss questions that lie at the overlap of contemporary legal positivism and philosophy of international law, such as:

• Why does legal positivism not often account for international law?
• Are there reasons for international law to be “a borderline case of law”?
• Is there a necessity in a special jurisprudential theory for international law, or do weneed to strive towards a more general theory of law?
• Sources doctrine and institutional pedigree: a procrustean bed?
• What can international law reveal to analytic jurisprudence?
• Normativity of international law: soft law, jus cogens, and everything in between.Participants:

• Scott Shapiro, Yale University
• Monica Hakimi, University of Michigan
• Adil Haque, Rutgers University
• Rachel Lopez, Drexel University
• Mathieu Carpentier, University of Toulouse I
• Carmen Pavel, King’s College London
• Nicolás Carrillo-Santarelli, University of Monterrey and Tadeo Lozano University
• Başak Etkin, University of Paris II
• Kostia Gorobets, University of Groningen
• Ignacio de Casas, Austral UniversityIf you wish to participate, please register by this link:https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_nr_opybhRnKVSw0hn5yBHQOrganisers: Nicolás Carrillo-Santarelli, Başak Etkin, and Kostia Gorobets.