This article explores international legal entanglements with the infrastructure of Coordinated Un... more This article explores international legal entanglements with the infrastructure of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), a socio-technical construction that comprises the globally definitive measure of seconds, minutes and hours working in lockstep around the world. UTC is produced and maintained with international law, through international administration with social, political, material and technical dimensions. In analysing mutual entanglements of international law with infrastructural relations organized around UTC, the article assesses their imbrication in globalized governance routines and distributive patterns, instantiated here with reference to the field of finance. The article further considers ways to engage legal-infrastructural relations for material change in patterns of governance.
What eventually determines the semantics of algorithmic decision-making is not the program artefa... more What eventually determines the semantics of algorithmic decision-making is not the program artefact, nor-if applicable-the data used to create it, but the preparatory (enabling) and consequent (enabled) practices holding in the environment (computational and human) in which such algorithmic procedure is embedded. The notion of responsibility captures a very similar construct: in all human societies actions are evaluated in terms of the consequences they could reasonably cause, and of the reasons that motivate them. But to what extent does this function exist in computational systems? The paper aims to sketch links between several of the approaches and concepts proposed for responsible computing, from AI to networking, identifying gaps and possible directions for operationalization. Keywords: Responsibility • Responsible computing • Responsible AI • Responsible networking • Contextual integrity • Conditional contextual disparity This research was partly supported by the UvA (RPA Human(e) AI seed grant) and by NWO (DL4LD project, no. 628.009.001).
This article holds that governmental investments in quantum technologies speak to the imaginable ... more This article holds that governmental investments in quantum technologies speak to the imaginable futures of digital sovereignty and digital infrastructures, two major areas of change driven by related technologies like AI and Big Data, among other things, in international law today. Under intense development today for future interpolation into digital systems that they may alter, quantum technologies occupy a sort of liminal position, rooted in existing assemblages of computational technologies while pointing to new horizons for them. The possibilities they raise are neither certain nor determinate, but active investments in them (legal, political and material investments) offer perspective on digital technology-driven influences on an international legal imagination. In contributing to visions of the future that are guiding ambitions for digital sovereignty and digital infrastructures, quantum technologies condition digital technology-driven changes to international law and legal i...
This paper presents a multidisciplinary approach (media studies, computer science, and legal scho... more This paper presents a multidisciplinary approach (media studies, computer science, and legal scholarship) for the analysis of systems that rely on AI components as central components of their design. Taking recommender systems more generally and the one built by YouTube more specifically, we develop a methodology for conceptualizing and studying the broad array of "ideas", "norms", or "values" such systems mobilize. Instead of limiting ourselves to a narrow understanding of these terms, we take into account, for example, translations from economic models, social theories, legal requirements, ethical principles, technical knowledge, experiential evaluations, or other constructs used to define and justify design goals and decisions that shape the production of technical objects and, consequently, the object themselves. In this paper we discuss three directions for analysis and present first results. Investigating technical knowledge includes the study of scholarly literature and experimentation with concrete objects such as LensKit for Python to understand the "ambient" knowledge and normativity engineers and designers draw on. Investigating local circumstances involves ethnographic analysis, but also the reconstruction of the business models and legal environment that weigh on YouTube's design. Analyzing a system in use can draw on technical observation, via scraping or API data, of the actual dynamics of recommendation that emerge when users enter into the equation. Taken together, these three approaches can "encircle" the various moments where value(s) are shaped and put into work in the context of systems where direct access to specifications is improbable.
This contribution focuses on the interoperation of analogue and digital information technologies ... more This contribution focuses on the interoperation of analogue and digital information technologies (and techniques associated with them), to ask how their interoperation has determined (and changed) what is made legible in practices associated with international institutions. It traces how the interoperation of digital and analogue technologies has supported the intensification of efficiency-maximizing institutional routines, now expressed in the so-called optimization function associated with neural networks and artificial intelligence. As a result, the terrain of contestation has shifted in significant ways from arguments over rules to pattern-recognition processes that determine efficient solutions according to optimal outcomes. Institutional practice on this new terrain aspires to a sort of immediacy, a direct engagement in the becoming of the thing(s) to which the institutional mandate may apply. This immediacy defies the reflective character associated with traditional legal pra...
On the heavily polluted soil of De Ceuvel-a former shipyard in Amsterdam turned into an eco-tech ... more On the heavily polluted soil of De Ceuvel-a former shipyard in Amsterdam turned into an eco-tech playground-the Sovereign Nature Initiative (SNI) recently convened its first Experimental Zone: a 'celebration of ecology, art, theory and emerging technologies' (Sovereign Nature Initiative 2022a). Bringing together crypto-poets, ecophilosophers, blockchain developers and tech start-up investors, the gathering sought to spark 'radical approaches toward sustainability'. How could the non-human speak for and sustain itself when seen, sensed, mediated and multiplied through new technological tools or interventions? Which worlds can be crafted where 'trees, hyenas, snails, rivers, elk and algae preserve their own value' and 'humans … have a stake in their thriving' (Sovereign Nature Initiative 2022b)? How can one govern with and through the sky and subterranean? Situated at the 'intersection of ecology, economy and emerging web3 technologies', SNI nurtures 'radical approaches' that aspire to 'reconfigur[e] nature's value' and to enact a 'non-exploitative, non-consumerist' relation between 'nature, humans and technology'. De Ceuvel in Amsterdam Noord proved a perfect place for this experimental exploration. Built on the site's toxic soil, creative workspaces nested in old houseboats are tied together with natural surroundings through a winding wooden jetty. Phytoremediation plants labor (and die) to clean the polluted earth-a process that is measured, mapped and materialized into a vibrant, hybrid and digitally mediated ecology. De Ceuvel describes itself as 'never finished'-in a 'perpetual state of development' (De Ceuvel 2022). It does not only strive for specific sustainability solutions but also for a 'cultural transition', claiming that 'people have to learn new modes of thought and how to apply new techniques and technologies'. Operating on this 'cleantech playground' of De Ceuvel, Metabolic-a technology development and consultancy organisation-developed a 'sensor network' to provide
Our contribution describes a reorientation in the intelligibility of governance practices authori... more Our contribution describes a reorientation in the intelligibility of governance practices authorised under international law. Observing the World Bank, we narrate new managerial attitudes and organisational routines that exhibit heightened 'risk appetites'. Risk and complexity are no longer seen as limiting conditions on the institutional project, but as co-constitutive elements and constructive tools, including new sets of heuristics aimed at governing with and through contingency and unknowability. The practices that we observe are characterised by adaptive, iterative and recursive routines, flexibly attuned to immanent possibilities and aims of resilience. We situate these changes in a genealogy of governmentality, focusing on the relation to a 'surplus of life', or unruly elements of populations that persistently escape productive incorporation into the closure of institutional programmes. The World Bank's turn to resilience as a particular rationality of reform signals an institutional attempt to enrol what has escaped prior efforts at determinate institutional intervention.
This chapter addresses ways in which contingency supports international law. It takes off from a ... more This chapter addresses ways in which contingency supports international law. It takes off from a supposition that contingency is a key element in the operation of international law as a mode of power. The underlying insight is simple and familiar: international law is indeterminate. In an indeterminate field, contingency is part of the basic construction. Any given decision or disposition can always be otherwise. Determination is likewise relevant here: when a given rule or right is amenable to two or more divergent readings-when the rule or right is a contingent one-resolution will be driven by other powers and things; and when international legal controversies are resolved in consistent fashion over time, some other apparatuses contribute to stabilize the practice of international law. But these determining forces or apparatuses operate in conjunction with contingency under international law, they do not overthrow it. In interoperation with them, the utility of international law resides precisely in its contingent possibilities. This puts international law in a co-productive relationship with these other apparatuses: by virtue of its contingent character, international law operates to sustain the apparatuses that work to structure the field of international law. In this chapter, I look at two such structuring apparatuses, temporal and economic, with which international law has a co-productive relationship, and the ways in which contingency is mobilized among them. To get at the relationship among these things, I first take a step back to sketch a larger context by which the contingency of international law can be made legible. The larger context that I gesture to here pertains to a western humanist tradition stretching back at least to the Renaissance. Working with this context for what it makes legible, I will rehearse the following argument: International law relies on contingency to sustain the humanist fantasy of a temporal economic actor. This temporal economic actor presupposes an abstract but individualized subject understood to be sovereign over itself. The self-sovereign individual is defined by capacities for agency and rationality that are mobilized in social and political context to maximize (self-)interest in the name of utility. On these bases-individual self-sovereignty, agency, rationality, interests and utility-the humanist fantasy includes an emancipatory pretension to political pre-eminence that is inscribed in its temporality, but at odds with its economic underpinnings. The pretension to pre-eminence corresponds historically with an ascendant normative regime that has succeeded as an economic program but continuously failed in significant political respects. The pretension to emancipatory political pre-eminence, however, persists not despite but on the basis of failure and contradiction. Its frustrations are construed as a function of its contingent character, establishing negatively the urgency of its redemptive promise. Thereby, contingency becomes the principle by which the legitimacy of the normative program is intelligible. [This is a draft making its way towards publication in a conference volume. Comments welcome.]
In its recent decision on provisional measures in the Alleged violations of the 1955 Treaty of Am... more In its recent decision on provisional measures in the Alleged violations of the 1955 Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations, and Consular Rights Case brought by Iran against the US (Iran-US), the International Court of Justice announced a seemingly futile order for relief against ongoing US actions. With this contribution, however, I propose a reading of the order by which it is neither futile nor against US action. My reading of it in context includes an argument that international law favors certain actors and associations by enabling economic coercion, while disfavoring others by selectively disabling other possibilities for coercion. By this basic reading, the practice of international law simultaneously supports and is supported by a certain (im)balance of forces, by which I mean materially-backed associations among international actors. Understood in this context, the practices of the ICJ and international law generally over time contribute by design to historical imbalance in distributions of resources and other values globally. The imbalance is constitutive, including privilege and particularity baked into the United Nations Charter (the Charter). Coercive activity by economically powerful states underwrites the maintenance of relations under the Charter regime; such ongoing support constitutes the first mandate for the continuing performance of the UN, including the ICJ. A primary objective of my contribution is to develop a method suited to making legible the reality and ramifications of this condition. For the purpose, method, analysis and argument will be closely intertwined within an eclectic framework that is also a deliberate intervention into particular modes of politics and exercises of power. The research framework that I elaborate is designed for flexibility, to stay attuned to diverse actors in their diverse capacities, actors who are not concerned with perfect consistency, overall coherence, or any singular, final justification for the powers they wield. Thereby I sketch how international law occurs in a complex ecology of distributive networks stabilized by ongoing practices that maintain an imbalance of coercive potentialities over time. [This is a draft 2019 making its way towards publication in workshop symposium. Comments welcome.]
European Journal of International Law, volume 29.4, 2018
This article examines the establishment of globally standardized time under law in colonial India... more This article examines the establishment of globally standardized time under law in colonial India. Despite pretensions to abstract universality, globally standardized time was and remains a particular construction, built on the basis of particular interests. Since its creation, select parties have competed to dominate the production and operation of globally standardized time, and their competition has been steeped with law. In short, globally standardized time and what we today call transnational law are mutually implicated in the construction of one another. The history of their interaction in colonial India makes clear the ways they work together as a sort of technology, produced and maintained for particular purposes. Those purposes include the capacity to stabilize expectations and establish normative baselines in support of transactional networks across borders, and ultimately around the world. The process continues to this day, with standardized time and law interacting to enable and disable a changing array of legal practices and expectations internationally. The establishment of globally standardized time under law in colonial India reveals the foundations of this interrelationship, including imperial interests and ideologies embedded in its material development.
This chapter explores aspects of time and what we today call transnational law, embodied in the o... more This chapter explores aspects of time and what we today call transnational law, embodied in the object of the railway clock. Railway clocks acted as crucial elements of networks, to implement and disseminate a standardized time formalized by international law in the 19th century. Together, they produced a new temporal regime of strict mechanical conformance to an abstract standard, oriented globally to a single appointed meridian. The chapter demonstrates how transnational law and standardised time have co-produced one another. Law was mobilised to create standardised time in the 19th century; standardised time has made possible the growth of a particular law globally. Together, they have operated to enable the expansion of capitalist markets and transactional relations globally.
Universality has occupied a consistently central but also historically contingent role in concept... more Universality has occupied a consistently central but also historically contingent role in conceptions, operations and mobilizations of international law over time. It has taken on a variety of characters as a matter of doctrine, ideology and historical materiality. Universalism has served in international law as a wellspring for both dominant ideologies and modes of resistance: it has underwritten colonial oppression, but has also been adopted for successful resistance to colonialism; and it has reappeared both in imperialist and counter-hegemonic projects in post-colonial legal relations today. Universalism can be doctrinally described as underlying principle, or abstract tenet, classically related in international law to ends of harmony, equality or autonomy. Understood in terms of dominant ideologies, however, universalism at once obscures and legitimizes the particular interests that drive the operation of international law. This has the effect of naturalizing the interests of the few that are made to apply globally. But universalism can be comprehended in still more quotidian ways. This essay focuses on an ideological meeting point of universalism between doctrine and daily practice. That meeting point has been a site associated with empire, but it might arguably still be reclaimed and repurposed as a site in support of a different sort of political solidarity under law.
This collective paper discusses the many faceted entanglements of knowledge, power and law within... more This collective paper discusses the many faceted entanglements of knowledge, power and law within, and, even more so, beyond the state. Several eminent scholars in the field offer their view on how the knowledge-power-law nexus should be framed, and what its most salient problems are. In the first chapter, we examine Performativity of Expertise to answer the question why this form of knowledge has so much power over law (Tauschinsky, Christodoulidis, Farrand, and Everson). The second chapter discusses the consequences of De-localisation of Knowledge, ultimately raising the question of the distributive consequences of the governance beyond the state (Bartl, Lixinski, and Muir-Watt). The third chapter deals with the Transformation of Law, and in particular with the question whether the new constellation of power and knowledge beyond the state requires different thinking about the concept and the role of law (Micklitz, Patterson, Gupta, and Kukovec). Some of the contributions build on each other, others are contradictory. Together, however, they represent an intriguing and comprehensive picture of the ongoing debates and practical problems of law and governance beyond the state.
This is the final table of contents, introduction and all 60 chapter abstracts for the volume "Co... more This is the final table of contents, introduction and all 60 chapter abstracts for the volume "Concepts for International Law: Contributions to Disciplinary Thought."
The introduction, entitled 'The Life of International Law and its Concepts', is a standalone piece that grapples with the relation between legal concepts, life and living in international law. First, we briefly explore the contemporary malaise in international law’s disciplinary life, in and for which this book emerges. We urge a sensibility that sees working on international law’s concepts as opening up a range of possibilities in how we may act, live, know, see and understand within and towards the discipline. Second, we offer an overview into how legal thought has, in its diversity, approached legal concepts. We aim to draw out those sensibilities that remain prevalent in today’s legal writings on concepts, whilst also pointing to the limits, nuances and fractures of these sensibilities. In this regard we offer detailed readings, criticisms and extensions of texts by Jhering, Hohfeld, Ross, Cohen, Kennedy, Koskenniemi, and Marks to name but a few. These readings primarily point to the intricate and intractable difficulties of reconciling concepts with social life. They also point to a series of shifting and entwined aesthetic, ethical and political presuppositions that dominate the various ways in which we approach legal concepts today. In showing the diversity of legal sensibilities towards legal concepts, we hope to not only open up the various possibilities and limits of these sensibilities, but to point towards the intellectual cultural resources at the modern scholar’s disposal. Third, and finally, we offer an introduction to the volume itself. Here we outline how we chose its concepts, the types of concepts contained therein, and how we see the complex relations between different concepts.
This article explores international legal entanglements with the infrastructure of Coordinated Un... more This article explores international legal entanglements with the infrastructure of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), a socio-technical construction that comprises the globally definitive measure of seconds, minutes and hours working in lockstep around the world. UTC is produced and maintained with international law, through international administration with social, political, material and technical dimensions. In analysing mutual entanglements of international law with infrastructural relations organized around UTC, the article assesses their imbrication in globalized governance routines and distributive patterns, instantiated here with reference to the field of finance. The article further considers ways to engage legal-infrastructural relations for material change in patterns of governance.
What eventually determines the semantics of algorithmic decision-making is not the program artefa... more What eventually determines the semantics of algorithmic decision-making is not the program artefact, nor-if applicable-the data used to create it, but the preparatory (enabling) and consequent (enabled) practices holding in the environment (computational and human) in which such algorithmic procedure is embedded. The notion of responsibility captures a very similar construct: in all human societies actions are evaluated in terms of the consequences they could reasonably cause, and of the reasons that motivate them. But to what extent does this function exist in computational systems? The paper aims to sketch links between several of the approaches and concepts proposed for responsible computing, from AI to networking, identifying gaps and possible directions for operationalization. Keywords: Responsibility • Responsible computing • Responsible AI • Responsible networking • Contextual integrity • Conditional contextual disparity This research was partly supported by the UvA (RPA Human(e) AI seed grant) and by NWO (DL4LD project, no. 628.009.001).
This article holds that governmental investments in quantum technologies speak to the imaginable ... more This article holds that governmental investments in quantum technologies speak to the imaginable futures of digital sovereignty and digital infrastructures, two major areas of change driven by related technologies like AI and Big Data, among other things, in international law today. Under intense development today for future interpolation into digital systems that they may alter, quantum technologies occupy a sort of liminal position, rooted in existing assemblages of computational technologies while pointing to new horizons for them. The possibilities they raise are neither certain nor determinate, but active investments in them (legal, political and material investments) offer perspective on digital technology-driven influences on an international legal imagination. In contributing to visions of the future that are guiding ambitions for digital sovereignty and digital infrastructures, quantum technologies condition digital technology-driven changes to international law and legal i...
This paper presents a multidisciplinary approach (media studies, computer science, and legal scho... more This paper presents a multidisciplinary approach (media studies, computer science, and legal scholarship) for the analysis of systems that rely on AI components as central components of their design. Taking recommender systems more generally and the one built by YouTube more specifically, we develop a methodology for conceptualizing and studying the broad array of "ideas", "norms", or "values" such systems mobilize. Instead of limiting ourselves to a narrow understanding of these terms, we take into account, for example, translations from economic models, social theories, legal requirements, ethical principles, technical knowledge, experiential evaluations, or other constructs used to define and justify design goals and decisions that shape the production of technical objects and, consequently, the object themselves. In this paper we discuss three directions for analysis and present first results. Investigating technical knowledge includes the study of scholarly literature and experimentation with concrete objects such as LensKit for Python to understand the "ambient" knowledge and normativity engineers and designers draw on. Investigating local circumstances involves ethnographic analysis, but also the reconstruction of the business models and legal environment that weigh on YouTube's design. Analyzing a system in use can draw on technical observation, via scraping or API data, of the actual dynamics of recommendation that emerge when users enter into the equation. Taken together, these three approaches can "encircle" the various moments where value(s) are shaped and put into work in the context of systems where direct access to specifications is improbable.
This contribution focuses on the interoperation of analogue and digital information technologies ... more This contribution focuses on the interoperation of analogue and digital information technologies (and techniques associated with them), to ask how their interoperation has determined (and changed) what is made legible in practices associated with international institutions. It traces how the interoperation of digital and analogue technologies has supported the intensification of efficiency-maximizing institutional routines, now expressed in the so-called optimization function associated with neural networks and artificial intelligence. As a result, the terrain of contestation has shifted in significant ways from arguments over rules to pattern-recognition processes that determine efficient solutions according to optimal outcomes. Institutional practice on this new terrain aspires to a sort of immediacy, a direct engagement in the becoming of the thing(s) to which the institutional mandate may apply. This immediacy defies the reflective character associated with traditional legal pra...
On the heavily polluted soil of De Ceuvel-a former shipyard in Amsterdam turned into an eco-tech ... more On the heavily polluted soil of De Ceuvel-a former shipyard in Amsterdam turned into an eco-tech playground-the Sovereign Nature Initiative (SNI) recently convened its first Experimental Zone: a 'celebration of ecology, art, theory and emerging technologies' (Sovereign Nature Initiative 2022a). Bringing together crypto-poets, ecophilosophers, blockchain developers and tech start-up investors, the gathering sought to spark 'radical approaches toward sustainability'. How could the non-human speak for and sustain itself when seen, sensed, mediated and multiplied through new technological tools or interventions? Which worlds can be crafted where 'trees, hyenas, snails, rivers, elk and algae preserve their own value' and 'humans … have a stake in their thriving' (Sovereign Nature Initiative 2022b)? How can one govern with and through the sky and subterranean? Situated at the 'intersection of ecology, economy and emerging web3 technologies', SNI nurtures 'radical approaches' that aspire to 'reconfigur[e] nature's value' and to enact a 'non-exploitative, non-consumerist' relation between 'nature, humans and technology'. De Ceuvel in Amsterdam Noord proved a perfect place for this experimental exploration. Built on the site's toxic soil, creative workspaces nested in old houseboats are tied together with natural surroundings through a winding wooden jetty. Phytoremediation plants labor (and die) to clean the polluted earth-a process that is measured, mapped and materialized into a vibrant, hybrid and digitally mediated ecology. De Ceuvel describes itself as 'never finished'-in a 'perpetual state of development' (De Ceuvel 2022). It does not only strive for specific sustainability solutions but also for a 'cultural transition', claiming that 'people have to learn new modes of thought and how to apply new techniques and technologies'. Operating on this 'cleantech playground' of De Ceuvel, Metabolic-a technology development and consultancy organisation-developed a 'sensor network' to provide
Our contribution describes a reorientation in the intelligibility of governance practices authori... more Our contribution describes a reorientation in the intelligibility of governance practices authorised under international law. Observing the World Bank, we narrate new managerial attitudes and organisational routines that exhibit heightened 'risk appetites'. Risk and complexity are no longer seen as limiting conditions on the institutional project, but as co-constitutive elements and constructive tools, including new sets of heuristics aimed at governing with and through contingency and unknowability. The practices that we observe are characterised by adaptive, iterative and recursive routines, flexibly attuned to immanent possibilities and aims of resilience. We situate these changes in a genealogy of governmentality, focusing on the relation to a 'surplus of life', or unruly elements of populations that persistently escape productive incorporation into the closure of institutional programmes. The World Bank's turn to resilience as a particular rationality of reform signals an institutional attempt to enrol what has escaped prior efforts at determinate institutional intervention.
This chapter addresses ways in which contingency supports international law. It takes off from a ... more This chapter addresses ways in which contingency supports international law. It takes off from a supposition that contingency is a key element in the operation of international law as a mode of power. The underlying insight is simple and familiar: international law is indeterminate. In an indeterminate field, contingency is part of the basic construction. Any given decision or disposition can always be otherwise. Determination is likewise relevant here: when a given rule or right is amenable to two or more divergent readings-when the rule or right is a contingent one-resolution will be driven by other powers and things; and when international legal controversies are resolved in consistent fashion over time, some other apparatuses contribute to stabilize the practice of international law. But these determining forces or apparatuses operate in conjunction with contingency under international law, they do not overthrow it. In interoperation with them, the utility of international law resides precisely in its contingent possibilities. This puts international law in a co-productive relationship with these other apparatuses: by virtue of its contingent character, international law operates to sustain the apparatuses that work to structure the field of international law. In this chapter, I look at two such structuring apparatuses, temporal and economic, with which international law has a co-productive relationship, and the ways in which contingency is mobilized among them. To get at the relationship among these things, I first take a step back to sketch a larger context by which the contingency of international law can be made legible. The larger context that I gesture to here pertains to a western humanist tradition stretching back at least to the Renaissance. Working with this context for what it makes legible, I will rehearse the following argument: International law relies on contingency to sustain the humanist fantasy of a temporal economic actor. This temporal economic actor presupposes an abstract but individualized subject understood to be sovereign over itself. The self-sovereign individual is defined by capacities for agency and rationality that are mobilized in social and political context to maximize (self-)interest in the name of utility. On these bases-individual self-sovereignty, agency, rationality, interests and utility-the humanist fantasy includes an emancipatory pretension to political pre-eminence that is inscribed in its temporality, but at odds with its economic underpinnings. The pretension to pre-eminence corresponds historically with an ascendant normative regime that has succeeded as an economic program but continuously failed in significant political respects. The pretension to emancipatory political pre-eminence, however, persists not despite but on the basis of failure and contradiction. Its frustrations are construed as a function of its contingent character, establishing negatively the urgency of its redemptive promise. Thereby, contingency becomes the principle by which the legitimacy of the normative program is intelligible. [This is a draft making its way towards publication in a conference volume. Comments welcome.]
In its recent decision on provisional measures in the Alleged violations of the 1955 Treaty of Am... more In its recent decision on provisional measures in the Alleged violations of the 1955 Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations, and Consular Rights Case brought by Iran against the US (Iran-US), the International Court of Justice announced a seemingly futile order for relief against ongoing US actions. With this contribution, however, I propose a reading of the order by which it is neither futile nor against US action. My reading of it in context includes an argument that international law favors certain actors and associations by enabling economic coercion, while disfavoring others by selectively disabling other possibilities for coercion. By this basic reading, the practice of international law simultaneously supports and is supported by a certain (im)balance of forces, by which I mean materially-backed associations among international actors. Understood in this context, the practices of the ICJ and international law generally over time contribute by design to historical imbalance in distributions of resources and other values globally. The imbalance is constitutive, including privilege and particularity baked into the United Nations Charter (the Charter). Coercive activity by economically powerful states underwrites the maintenance of relations under the Charter regime; such ongoing support constitutes the first mandate for the continuing performance of the UN, including the ICJ. A primary objective of my contribution is to develop a method suited to making legible the reality and ramifications of this condition. For the purpose, method, analysis and argument will be closely intertwined within an eclectic framework that is also a deliberate intervention into particular modes of politics and exercises of power. The research framework that I elaborate is designed for flexibility, to stay attuned to diverse actors in their diverse capacities, actors who are not concerned with perfect consistency, overall coherence, or any singular, final justification for the powers they wield. Thereby I sketch how international law occurs in a complex ecology of distributive networks stabilized by ongoing practices that maintain an imbalance of coercive potentialities over time. [This is a draft 2019 making its way towards publication in workshop symposium. Comments welcome.]
European Journal of International Law, volume 29.4, 2018
This article examines the establishment of globally standardized time under law in colonial India... more This article examines the establishment of globally standardized time under law in colonial India. Despite pretensions to abstract universality, globally standardized time was and remains a particular construction, built on the basis of particular interests. Since its creation, select parties have competed to dominate the production and operation of globally standardized time, and their competition has been steeped with law. In short, globally standardized time and what we today call transnational law are mutually implicated in the construction of one another. The history of their interaction in colonial India makes clear the ways they work together as a sort of technology, produced and maintained for particular purposes. Those purposes include the capacity to stabilize expectations and establish normative baselines in support of transactional networks across borders, and ultimately around the world. The process continues to this day, with standardized time and law interacting to enable and disable a changing array of legal practices and expectations internationally. The establishment of globally standardized time under law in colonial India reveals the foundations of this interrelationship, including imperial interests and ideologies embedded in its material development.
This chapter explores aspects of time and what we today call transnational law, embodied in the o... more This chapter explores aspects of time and what we today call transnational law, embodied in the object of the railway clock. Railway clocks acted as crucial elements of networks, to implement and disseminate a standardized time formalized by international law in the 19th century. Together, they produced a new temporal regime of strict mechanical conformance to an abstract standard, oriented globally to a single appointed meridian. The chapter demonstrates how transnational law and standardised time have co-produced one another. Law was mobilised to create standardised time in the 19th century; standardised time has made possible the growth of a particular law globally. Together, they have operated to enable the expansion of capitalist markets and transactional relations globally.
Universality has occupied a consistently central but also historically contingent role in concept... more Universality has occupied a consistently central but also historically contingent role in conceptions, operations and mobilizations of international law over time. It has taken on a variety of characters as a matter of doctrine, ideology and historical materiality. Universalism has served in international law as a wellspring for both dominant ideologies and modes of resistance: it has underwritten colonial oppression, but has also been adopted for successful resistance to colonialism; and it has reappeared both in imperialist and counter-hegemonic projects in post-colonial legal relations today. Universalism can be doctrinally described as underlying principle, or abstract tenet, classically related in international law to ends of harmony, equality or autonomy. Understood in terms of dominant ideologies, however, universalism at once obscures and legitimizes the particular interests that drive the operation of international law. This has the effect of naturalizing the interests of the few that are made to apply globally. But universalism can be comprehended in still more quotidian ways. This essay focuses on an ideological meeting point of universalism between doctrine and daily practice. That meeting point has been a site associated with empire, but it might arguably still be reclaimed and repurposed as a site in support of a different sort of political solidarity under law.
This collective paper discusses the many faceted entanglements of knowledge, power and law within... more This collective paper discusses the many faceted entanglements of knowledge, power and law within, and, even more so, beyond the state. Several eminent scholars in the field offer their view on how the knowledge-power-law nexus should be framed, and what its most salient problems are. In the first chapter, we examine Performativity of Expertise to answer the question why this form of knowledge has so much power over law (Tauschinsky, Christodoulidis, Farrand, and Everson). The second chapter discusses the consequences of De-localisation of Knowledge, ultimately raising the question of the distributive consequences of the governance beyond the state (Bartl, Lixinski, and Muir-Watt). The third chapter deals with the Transformation of Law, and in particular with the question whether the new constellation of power and knowledge beyond the state requires different thinking about the concept and the role of law (Micklitz, Patterson, Gupta, and Kukovec). Some of the contributions build on each other, others are contradictory. Together, however, they represent an intriguing and comprehensive picture of the ongoing debates and practical problems of law and governance beyond the state.
This is the final table of contents, introduction and all 60 chapter abstracts for the volume "Co... more This is the final table of contents, introduction and all 60 chapter abstracts for the volume "Concepts for International Law: Contributions to Disciplinary Thought."
The introduction, entitled 'The Life of International Law and its Concepts', is a standalone piece that grapples with the relation between legal concepts, life and living in international law. First, we briefly explore the contemporary malaise in international law’s disciplinary life, in and for which this book emerges. We urge a sensibility that sees working on international law’s concepts as opening up a range of possibilities in how we may act, live, know, see and understand within and towards the discipline. Second, we offer an overview into how legal thought has, in its diversity, approached legal concepts. We aim to draw out those sensibilities that remain prevalent in today’s legal writings on concepts, whilst also pointing to the limits, nuances and fractures of these sensibilities. In this regard we offer detailed readings, criticisms and extensions of texts by Jhering, Hohfeld, Ross, Cohen, Kennedy, Koskenniemi, and Marks to name but a few. These readings primarily point to the intricate and intractable difficulties of reconciling concepts with social life. They also point to a series of shifting and entwined aesthetic, ethical and political presuppositions that dominate the various ways in which we approach legal concepts today. In showing the diversity of legal sensibilities towards legal concepts, we hope to not only open up the various possibilities and limits of these sensibilities, but to point towards the intellectual cultural resources at the modern scholar’s disposal. Third, and finally, we offer an introduction to the volume itself. Here we outline how we chose its concepts, the types of concepts contained therein, and how we see the complex relations between different concepts.
Our stream invites contributors to analyse the relations between law and security through a tempo... more Our stream invites contributors to analyse the relations between law and security through a temporal lens. What does it mean to rethink in temporal terms the legal conflicts provoked by security politics? Relevant practices for consideration include, but are not limited to: targeted killings, cybersecurity, communications surveillance, global health security, counter--radicalisation and other counter--terrorism measures. In the context of these practices, we invite interdisciplinary panel and paper investigations into the interrelationship of time, technology and security politics. One line of inquiry concerns how securing against uncertain future threats in the present alters the temporal features of law. Another asks how law and time operate together to enable security politics in the first place. We welcome proposals asking whether existing and emerging accountability mechanisms adequately respond to speculative security measures.
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Papers by Geoff Gordon
Keywords:
Time, technology, ideology, international, transnational, global, imperial, networks, markets, standardization
Books by Geoff Gordon
The introduction, entitled 'The Life of International Law and its Concepts', is a standalone piece that grapples with the relation between legal concepts, life and living in international law. First, we briefly explore the contemporary malaise in international law’s disciplinary life, in and for which this book emerges. We urge a sensibility that sees working on international law’s concepts as opening up a range of possibilities in how we may act, live, know, see and understand within and towards the discipline. Second, we offer an overview into how legal thought has, in its diversity, approached legal concepts. We aim to draw out those sensibilities that remain prevalent in today’s legal writings on concepts, whilst also pointing to the limits, nuances and fractures of these sensibilities. In this regard we offer detailed readings, criticisms and extensions of texts by Jhering, Hohfeld, Ross, Cohen, Kennedy, Koskenniemi, and Marks to name but a few. These readings primarily point to the intricate and intractable difficulties of reconciling concepts with social life. They also point to a series of shifting and entwined aesthetic, ethical and political presuppositions that dominate the various ways in which we approach legal concepts today. In showing the diversity of legal sensibilities towards legal concepts, we hope to not only open up the various possibilities and limits of these sensibilities, but to point towards the intellectual cultural resources at the modern scholar’s disposal. Third, and finally, we offer an introduction to the volume itself. Here we outline how we chose its concepts, the types of concepts contained therein, and how we see the complex relations between different concepts.
Keywords:
Time, technology, ideology, international, transnational, global, imperial, networks, markets, standardization
The introduction, entitled 'The Life of International Law and its Concepts', is a standalone piece that grapples with the relation between legal concepts, life and living in international law. First, we briefly explore the contemporary malaise in international law’s disciplinary life, in and for which this book emerges. We urge a sensibility that sees working on international law’s concepts as opening up a range of possibilities in how we may act, live, know, see and understand within and towards the discipline. Second, we offer an overview into how legal thought has, in its diversity, approached legal concepts. We aim to draw out those sensibilities that remain prevalent in today’s legal writings on concepts, whilst also pointing to the limits, nuances and fractures of these sensibilities. In this regard we offer detailed readings, criticisms and extensions of texts by Jhering, Hohfeld, Ross, Cohen, Kennedy, Koskenniemi, and Marks to name but a few. These readings primarily point to the intricate and intractable difficulties of reconciling concepts with social life. They also point to a series of shifting and entwined aesthetic, ethical and political presuppositions that dominate the various ways in which we approach legal concepts today. In showing the diversity of legal sensibilities towards legal concepts, we hope to not only open up the various possibilities and limits of these sensibilities, but to point towards the intellectual cultural resources at the modern scholar’s disposal. Third, and finally, we offer an introduction to the volume itself. Here we outline how we chose its concepts, the types of concepts contained therein, and how we see the complex relations between different concepts.