Wrange: Western Sahara, the European Commission and the Politics of International Legal Argument

Pål Wrange (Stockholm Univ. - Law) has posted Western Sahara, the European Commission and the Politics of International Legal Argument. Here's the abstract:

This essay proceeds from the idea that international law could (also) be viewed as a set of practices, in which legal arguments can be used for strategic purposes. It analyses how the European Commission argued strategically to persuade states to accept a trade agreement with Morocco over occupied Western Sahara, in spite of the fact that not only a virtually unanimous legal doctrine, but also the Court of Justice of the European Union, seemed to find it very difficult to pursue such an enterprise and comply with international law at the same time.