International Law and the Politics of History

by Anne Orford

As the future of international law has become a growing site of struggle within and between powerful states, debates over the history of international law have become increasingly heated. International Law and the Politics of History explores the ideological, political, and material stakes of apparently technical disputes over how the legal past should be studied and understood. Drawing on a deep knowledge of the history, theory, and practice of international law, Anne Orford argues that there can be no impartial accounts of international law's past and its relation to empire and capitalism. Rather than looking to history in a doomed attempt to find a new ground for formalist interpretations of what past legal texts really mean or what international regimes are really for, she urges lawyers and historians to embrace the creative role they play in making rather than finding the meaning of international law.

280 pages, Hardcover

Published August 5, 2021

Reviews

[Ned Cheston]

Unfortunately not what I wanted or expected when I bought it. I recently completed Prof Orford's course Civil War and the Transformation of International Law and found it to be extremely interesting. I hoped that this would resemble the lectures she delivered as part of that course. In reality, its much more to do with the international legal academy than the contents of international law.