Scientific reason and the discipline of international law

Abstract

Introduction The theme for the fifth European Society of International Law Research Forum invited participants to think about international law as a profession, and the different professional roles that international lawyers play. I was asked to reflect in particular upon international law as an academic discipline, and thus on the institutional and social constraints that shape the role of the international lawyer as a professional scholar. One of the challenges of writing on this theme of international law as a profession is methodological. As professionals, we have a mass of experiential material on which to draw in developing an account of international law as a profession. But how to re..