Teaching International Law is a topic of great importance in international law academia. In the past renowned international lawyers and research institutions have dealt with this matter. This book brings together a larger number of established international lawyers who not only present the state of the art of this discipline but also their own vision and perspective. Traditionally, teachers of international law had considerable influence on the development and the understanding of this subject. The international legal system has profoundly changed but in time of enormous challenges for the survivel of mankind the voice of the teachers should again be heard.
Peter Hilpold is professor in the Institut für Italienisches Recht at the University of Innsbruck
Giuseppe Nesi is professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Trento
From Introduction (pag. 3-5)
In no other legal discipline does the teacher enjoy such a prominent role as in International Law (IL). This outstanding role was obvious even from the very beginning of this discipline´s development – and it is no coincidence that IL's creation is closely associated with the names of theoreticians such as Francisco Suárez, Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, Samuel Pufendorf, and Emer de Vattel. It is still strongly perceptible today, albeit in a modified form adapted to the needs of modern times.
As will be shown in this volume, this role is interpreted very differently from region to region, from country to country and even from person to person. The teacher may be seen as a saint, a priest, a norm-creator, but also as a “tin soldier” and as a miserable apologist for and agent of the dominant powers. Any such judgement is, however, context-dependent, not only with regard to the teacher but also in relation to the observer.
Expectations as to the contributions the teacher of IL could and should make are often exaggerated and unrealistic. The teacher is not a norm-setter, even in IL, despite the fact that he or she may often have considerable interpretative leeway and may be able to influence the norm-creation process to some extent. But the opposite perspective is also wrong: Teachers, even if they are integrated in hierarchical systems need not be the politicians’ yes-men, and handmaidens. Self-respect should inhibit the most extreme deference even for government advisors and even more so for University teachers.
In the end, however, teachers often find themselves between a rock and a hard place, and everyone has to find his or her role in the particular environment in which these teachers are operating. Each situation is, to a very large degree, particular and no obvious solution is available to each and every teacher.
Nonetheless, it is assumed here that an investigation into the present-day role of the IL teacher can provide useful insights into the reality of this profession which is currently facing extraordinary challenges, and these challenges are to some extent also representative of the situation of IL as a whole. It is contended that teachers of IL are important actors in its development, at least in the sense that they provide basic insights into a highly complex subject, and they can also operate as mediators between different positions, claims, and pretensions. Teachers can also be important discussants in the controversy about the values undergirding the international legal order, a fact that has gained enormous importance regionally (in particular in the European area, mediated through EU law) but also on a universal level. Finally, in the worldwide quest to tackle essential challenges for humankind such as environmental protection, the fight against climate change, the need to address migration and the struggle against poverty and terrorism teachers of IL assume a decisive role in the difficult communication and negotiation process between the relevant stakeholders, but also towards the broader public that in any democratic setting should be the repository of the final responsibility in the decision-making process.
Teachers are themselves part of the democratic decision-making process (to the extent that they are able to operate within a democratic setting). They do not stand above it, but neither are they prohibited from contributing their specific knowledge and their values. In this sense, it becomes extremely important that in their education, their professional formation, and their academic advancement teachers themselves are part of a democratic, value-based environment. If modern legal orders are based on a series of non-negotiable values that find their best expression in basic human rights and a UN order in which the preservation of peace is at center stage, it is an important mission for teachers of IL to convey the relevant information, to act as a focal point for all such information and to try to develop the values underlying IL further – always, of course, within a genuine democratic process. IL teachers can be important, decisive actors in any attempt to mediate between interests, to reconcile interests, to align positions in the international legal order. In this, if they want to count, to be taken seriously now, they have essentially to adopt a positivist approach. If they want to be remembered also in the future, to have a significant part in solving the challenges of tomorrow, they have to see the norms in their broader context, to at least take notice of demands for change, of a shifting consensus on values that might demand a re-definition of traditional interpretative outcomes. How far the international lawyer is willing and prepared to depart from the agreed core meaning of a norm and to espouse aspirational ideas will vary, and often it may not even be clear whether the interpretative outcome is to be located – “territorially speaking” – at the interpretative core, within its “penumbra” or already slightly detached from it – with the lifeline to the core still intact. The claim to argue “on the basis of the existing law” is a basic condition of entry into the club of “recognized international lawyers”, but even if that lawyer sides with a prevailingly formalistic position he or she can make important contributions to IL’s further development, for “civilizational progress”, if thereby the confidence is acquired to make the interpretation of the international norm to some extent predictable, transparent, and unbiased and that “secrecy, dishonesty, fraud, or manipulation” are excluded as far as possible.
To make this happen important societal pre-conditions have to be guaranteed. Regularly (with very few exceptions) teachers are firm parts of a national educational system, and this system has to be conceived in such a way as to enable the teacher to rise to this mission.
Any analysis of the role of the teacher of IL as regards the consolidation and enhancement of basic societal values, any inquiry into the potential this role has for the promotion of aspirational goals that should advance human civilization in a peace-and consensus-oriented, human-rights-centered international order has therefore to focus not only on the person of the teacher but also on the institutional and societal environment he or she operates in.
Courtesy by Brill Nijhoff.