Grégoire Mallard, Northwestern University- "A Hermeneutic Theory of International Law: Explaining Changes in the Field of Nuclear Nonproliferation"
Northwestern University, Dept of Sociology
g-mallard@northwestern.edu
"A Hermeneutic Theory of International Law: Explaining Changes in the Field of Nuclear Nonproliferation."
Abstract: Sociologists have paid little attention to international law. As a result, we lack a proper theory explaining why international law changes over time, and what processes drive legal change at the international level. In this paper, I try to fill this gap. I first discuss three different theories of international legal change: the realist theory of international relations; the macro-cultural theory of legal norms; the theory of international regimes. The first three of these theories highlight important processes and mechanisms which affect legal change at the international level, respectively: the importance of hierarchies between states and asymmetries of power in world politics; the lasting effects of national cultural understandings of legal norms; the importance of interstate coordination for the design of problem-solving strategies in the face of new challenges. However, I show that the externalist and instrumentalist viewpoint which is common to all three approaches to international law lead to a series of insurmountable problems when applied to the study of legal change at the European level, especially where there is a plurality of legal norms to regulate interstate relations. I illustrate my argument by studying the joint evolution of the interpretation of treaty commitments contracted by European states per the European Community of Atomic Energy (Euratom) Treaty and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). I show that in the field of nonproliferation, Western lawmakers have had trouble creating commensurate rules between these two treaties and their subsequent legal regimes. I show that a sociological theory of legal change which builds upon field theory and hermeneutic theories of legal interpretation provides a better understanding of international legal change than previous theories, especially when international law is written in a plural legal context. My talk will be based on this theoretical chapter as well as upon two other empirical chapters from the book manuscript that I am completing, tentatively titled: The Long Search for a Nuclear Peace: Jean Monnet, the European Federalists and the Making of the World Nuclear Order.
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