d'Aspremont: A Worldly Law in a Legal World

Jean d'Aspremont (Sciences Po - Law; Univ. of Manchester - Law) has posted A Worldly Law in a Legal World (in International Law’s Invisible Frames, Andrea Bianchi & Moshe Hirsch eds., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Most of international legal thought and practice rests on a distinction between international law and the world to which international law applies. One commonly distinguishes between international law and the world to which international law applies when, for example, seeking to ground international law in practice, explicating the origin of international law, appreciating the impact of international law on global actors, elucidating the actual formation and functioning of international law, historicizing international legal discourses and international legal institutions, and even when shedding light on the world-making role of international law. Most international legal thought and practice is informed, in this sense, by what is called here a form of ontological dualism whereby the actuality, historicity, and materiality of international law is distinct from the actuality, historicity, and materiality of the world to which international law applies.

This chapter questions the ontological dualism that dominates international law and shows that, notwithstanding this common ontological dualism, international law and the world to which it applies are better construed as having no distinct actuality, historicity, and materiality, because international law exists nowhere else than in the world to which it applies and the world to which international law applies exists nowhere else than in international law. This chapter argues accordingly that the relationship between international law and the world to which it applies should be understood in totalizing rather than dualistic terms.