Bowring: The Degradation of the International Legal Order? The Rehabilitation of Law and the Possibility of Politics

Bill Bowring (Birkbeck College, Univ. of London - Law) has published The Degradation of the International Legal Order? The Rehabilitation of Law and the Possibility of Politics (Routledge-Cavendish 2008). Here's the abstract:

Providing the basis for critical engagement with the pessimism of the contemporary age, The Degradation of the International Legal Order? argues passionately for a rehabilitation of the honour of historic events and processes, and of their role in generating legal concepts. Drawing primarily from the Marxian tradition, but also engaging with a range of contemporary work in critical theory and critical legal and human rights scholarship, this book analyses historical and recent international events and processes in order to challenge their orthodox interpretation. What is thus proposed is a new evaluation of international legal principles and human rights norms, the revolutionary content of which, it is argued, turns them from mere rhetoric into powerful weapons of struggle.