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Article Dans Une Revue Rechtskultur - Zeitschrift für Europäische Rechtsgeschichte/European Journal of Legal History/Journal européen d’histoire du droit Année : 2013

Looking Beyond the Tip of the Iceberg: Diplomatic Praxis and Legal Culture in the History of Public International Law

Résumé

The present contribution outlines the scope of my doctoral dissertation 1 in terms of theoretical, conceptual, methodological and empirical choices. Although my research treated two specific case studies, its theoretical and methodological premises are of interest for the history of public international law in general. My research builds further on traditional, doctrine-or treaty-focused legal history, tackling diplomatic correspondence. Legal argumentation between states and their representatives ought to be read within the framework of legal culture. Norms guiding behaviour are often implicit. Moreover, the effect of formal sources of the law is often situated at the symbolic level, rather than in purely textual or explicit terms. I chose the uneasily calm three decades following the Peace of Utrecht (1713, ending the War of the Spanish Succession) as main case-study 2. Building on the typology drawn from primary-source analysis, I looked at a test-case for the universality of my hypothesis. Although more than two centuries separated the former from the latter, French contestation of the vertical world order after 1945 appealed to a similar rhetorical set of arguments 3. Consequently, anti-hegemonic discourse, referring to the material legitimacy of a formal criterion (state consent) appears as an evergreen of legal argumentation between states. First (Section 1), I treat the theoretical approach, or the conceptual framing of my research. The central question, which will serve throughout the next chapters in the analysis of primary material, will thus be shown to challenge the present acquis in three disciplines: legal history, diplomatic history and international law. Moreover, I will expound the inspiration from neighbouring disciplines or sub-disciplines in the broader humanities, that have devoted considerable attention to similar social phenomena. Secondly (Section 2), I propose the methodological approach best suited to the material brought forward. Section 1: Theoretical premises "Law (and social order in general) is concerned with relationships, and not with separate individuals or groups of individuals. Therefore the standards of legal order ought to be derived from the idea of interrelated and coordinated activities, and not from the idea of the independent existence of persons." Gerhart Niemeyer, Law Without Force. The Function of Politics in International Law 4 This theoretical part serves to inform the reader on the existing preconceptions of my approach to the sources of public international law. How to make sense out of a tantalizing amount of material ? How to relate findings to principles of a sufficiently general nature, recognized by the scholars active in the field ? Research is rarely fully original, in the sense that it only develops new theoretical assumptions from the study of previously unknown sources. Essentially, the theoretical approach chosen places the subject matter at the intersection of various disciplines, namely legal history, public international law and history of international relations. The following questions have guided my empirical research.

Domaines

Droit Histoire
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Dates et versions

hal-02912120 , version 1 (05-08-2020)

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Frederik Dhondt. Looking Beyond the Tip of the Iceberg: Diplomatic Praxis and Legal Culture in the History of Public International Law. Rechtskultur - Zeitschrift für Europäische Rechtsgeschichte/European Journal of Legal History/Journal européen d’histoire du droit, 2013, ⟨10.17176/20210121-120051-0⟩. ⟨hal-02912120⟩
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