9781316510780


Parution : 03/2022
Editeur : Cambridge University Press
ISBN : 978-1-3165-1078-0
Site de l'éditeur

Repetition and International Law

Wouter Werner

Présentation de l'éditeur

Acts of repetition abound in international law. Security Council Resolutions typically start by recalling, recollecting, recognising or reaffirming previous resolutions. Expert committees present restatements of international law. Students and staff extensively rehearse fictitious cases in presentations for moot court competitions. Customary law exists by virtue of repeated behaviour and restatements about the existence of rules. When sources of international law are deployed, historically contingent events are turned into manifestations of pre-given and repeatable categories. This book studies the workings of repetition across six discourses and practices in international law. It links acts of repetition to similar practices in religion, theatre, film and commerce. Building on the dialectics of repetition as set out by Soren Kierkegaard, it examines how repetition in international law is used to connect concrete practices to something that is bound to remain absent, unspeakable or unimaginable.

Wouter Werner is Professor of International Law at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam and Extraordinary Professor at the University of Curaçao.

Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law , 200 pages.  £ 85.00