Anthea Roberts, Is International Law International

1. Anthea Robert’s Is International Law International? is abundant in information and insights and it raises a thought-provoking question as the title goes. By investigating international law communities of the five permanent members of the Security Council of the United Nations, an impressive landscape of “comparative international law” is presented and great differences about international law between these countries are illuminated. 2. To describe the international law community, Chapter 1 proposes the “divisible college” rather than the “invisible college” of international lawyers and defines three central concepts. Difference focuses “analogous divisions among international lawyers located in, coming from, or educated in different states, regions, or geopolitical groupings” (p.6). Dominance refers to “some powerful Western states function as international law exporters” (p.9) and also “English as the field’s lingua franca” (p.10). Disruption describes international law and the understandings of it “may be disrupted by a variety of factors, including technological innovations, changes in domestic political preferences, and shifts in geopolitical power” (p.11)

Dominance (genetics · Geopolitics · International law · Political science · Politics · Sociology · International Law and Human Rights · Law