Law as Deliberative Discourse The Politics of International Legal Argument—Social Theory with Historical Illustrations

Oisin Suttle

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

In this paper I propose a novel account of international law as a subset of international political argument, in turn understood as a practice of deliberative discourse. I draw on a Habermasian communicative framework to integrate legal and political argument, facilitating a more nuanced and more plausible understanding of how international law and politics interact. Through a detailed examination of two historical cases from the rst decade of the Northern Ireland con ict, involving the United Nations and the European Convention on Human Rights respectively, I illustrate three key dimensions of this framework: the relation between legal and political argument; the relation between domestic and international argument; and the distinction between strategic and communicative uses of legal argument.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)151-203
Number of pages53
JournalJournal of International Law and International Relations
Volume12
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2016

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