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The French Tradition of International Law

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European International Law Traditions

Abstract

As international lawyers, we know what international law is. But how should we approach “tradition?” Tradition, after all, is not a concept that has any meaning or relevance in the universe of the law, as long as the law is understood as it dominantly is as a set of rules produced according to certain predetermined formal processes. As a matter of fact, “tradition” has no existence at all in the formal universe of the law. How, then, can we address the (French) tradition of international law when our own disciplinary field does not provide us with the most elementary theoretical tools to analyze and, more crucially, to even define “tradition?” These tools must therefore be found elsewhere. The approach taken in this essay has thus resolutely set aside our own disciplinary field—international law—and has inquired into those other academic fields that scientifically engage with tradition. Rather than focusing on the content of tradition, disciplinary fields such as anthropology or sociology investigate the modus operandi of tradition, its fashioners and followers, its patterns and transmission processes.

Consequently, this essay shifts the focus from the substance of the French tradition of international law to an investigation into the role of transmission of disciplinary culture and the modus operandi of that tradition, i.e., the social and psychological mechanisms and processes by which traditions come into being and survive. The way in which we, as teachers, scholars, and practitioners, hand down our knowledge of international law to current and future generations of international lawyers is culturally determined. Examined through the looking glass of the rituals, cultural attitudes, and social practices of the French international lawyers’ community, tradition appears to reflect vested interests and extant power structures. Deeply committed to its own preservation, tradition can be portrayed as a collective illusion or belief, as a form of constitutive narrative that constructs the self-representation and orders the everyday activities of international lawyers. Such beliefs are shaped and sustainably developed over time by epistemic communities that rely on discrete power structures and appear committed to maintaining the status quo.

Drawing insight from other disciplines, I argue that tradition shapes an inside/outside perspective and determines a dramatically different perception between the quasi-religious value of a certain narrative to the insiders to a tradition and, conversely, the diluted or quasi-transparent mark that the very same narrative imprints on the outside. Traditionalism fails to recognize itself as choice, and it thrives on its being unaware of itself. Ultimately, the point is to raise awareness about competing traditions and approaches to international law. The “standardized discourse” (la perception homologuée) indeed forcefully reveals how much the dominant discourse operates as a nondiscourse, by disqualifying or even silencing different postures and dissonant voices.

Hopefully, by engaging in such self-reflection, one may become aware of the extent to which we all are the product of national traditions, whose rules and constraints determine how we think about international law.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    To cite only a few, and only in the field of legal studies: Nicolas Cayrol and François Grua, Méthode des études de droit (Paris: Dalloz 4th edn 2017); Virginie Rapp-Cassigneul, La méthodologie de la dissertation et du commentaire d’article en schémas (Paris: Ellipses 2015 – the reader should note that the book presents the methodology in schemata…); Céline Laronde-Clérac et al., Méthodologie des exercices juridiques (Paris: LGDJ 4th edn 2017); Jean-Louis Sourioux and Pierre Lerat, L’analyse de texte – Méthode générale et applications au droit (Paris: Dalloz 5th edn 2004); David Bonnet, Exercices pratiques de méthodologie juridique (Paris: Ellipses 2015). Following a basic market logic, the number of available books on method is evidence that there is a strong demand, which speaks to the emphasis given to method in legal education. To see the dizzying number of internet sources on legal method and methodology, the reader can simply google the words “méthode juridique” or “méthode droit dissertation” or “méthode droit commentaire” and see for themselves how many entries come up. It should be noted, however, that this is by no means a distinctive feature of legal studies: the reader would find the same results if they searched for the methodology (let’s say) in philosophy or literature studies.

  2. 2.

    The reader can randomly open any French academic law journal and they will find that most articles, whether they are broader reflections on a topic or commentaries of a judicial or arbitral decision, are structured in two parts and two sub-parts.

  3. 3.

    Interestingly, every academic field seems to have its own formal tenets. Students of philosophy for instance will mainly be taught “le plan thèse-antithèse-synthèse”, also known as “le plan dialectique” which, unsurprisingly, is directly drawn from Hegelian dialectic.

  4. 4.

    Roland Barthes, ‘Ecrivains, intellectuels, professeurs’ in Roland Barthes, Le bruissement de la langue – Essais critiques IV (Paris: Seuil 1984) 377. He concludes his remarks by observing that “nothing is more efficient, to kill research and add it to the waste pile of abandoned work, nothing is more efficient than Method”.

  5. 5.

    Most law students are in fact under the impression that there is a specific methodology for structuring the introduction to a commentary of a decision by the French Cour de cassation (or any court with civil jurisdiction), a methodology that they feel is very different from the one they need to abide by when commenting a decision by an administrative court. This impression is of course not produced by the students’ own imagination but is created and fostered by their teachers. See for instance Roger Mendegris and Georges Vermelle, Le commentaire d’arrêt en droit privé – Méthodes et exemples (Paris: Dalloz 7th edn 2004).

  6. 6.

    Most teachers (and therefore students) even argue that there is a specific order in which these elements should appear in an introduction, starting with the (in)famous “phrase d’accroche” – a cause of great stress for students, and generally of disappointment for the reader – and ending with the “annonce de plan”. Unfortunately, students are almost never told that the “phrase d’accroche” should be dedramatized, as it is nothing but the unavoidable opening sentence of their work, and that the “annonce de plan” is just the common-sensical announcement of the order of analysis in which the paper will proceed.

  7. 7.

    One should note, however, the focus in recent years on the idea of national or regional legal traditions. For an overview of the current literature, see the introduction by Peter Hilpold in this volume.

  8. 8.

    John L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia (Oxford: OUP 1962) 3-4.

  9. 9.

    For instance, in Pierre Bourdieu, ‘The Scholastic Point of View’, (1990) 5 Cultural Anthropology 380-391; Sociologie générale vol. 1 – Cours au Collège de France 1981-1983 (Paris: Seuil 2015) 536 s. [on the notion of “field”].

  10. 10.

    Ibid., Sociologie générale vol. 1 90-93.

  11. 11.

    Nothing expresses this more powerfully than the claim openly made by some authors that there is a law-specific way of reasoning, grounded in formalism and rule-dependence, and that one needs to learn how to “think like a lawyer”. See Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer – A New Introduction to Legal Reasoning (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 2009); Kenneth J. Vandevelde, Thinking Like a Lawyer – An Introduction to Legal Reasoning (New York: Routledge 2nd edn 2018). Also noteworthy is Olivier Corten, Méthodologie du droit international public (Bruxelles: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles 2009): although it exposes a variety of methodological approaches and their theoretical underpinnings, the title alone is suggestive of the idea that there is but one methodology of international law.

  12. 12.

    Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations – The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (Abingdon: Routledge 1963) 6.

  13. 13.

    The idea (and scientific experiment) was initially introduced by Peter C. Wason, ‘Reasoning About a Rule’, (1968) 20 Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 142. The expression “confirmation bias”, however, was coined only a few years later by Clifford R. Mynatt, Michael E. Doherty and Ryan D. Tweney, ‘Confirmation Bias in a Simulated Research Environment: An Experimental Study of Scientific Interest’, (1977) 29 Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 85-95.

  14. 14.

    Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, The Enigma of Reason – A New Theory of Human Understanding (St Ives: Penguin Books 2018) 213, 218-219.

  15. 15.

    See for instance Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Inventing Traditions’, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: CUP 1983) 2-3.

  16. 16.

    Bourdieu calls this “participant objectivation”, which refers to the process of “objectivation of the subject of objectivation, of the analyzing subject, in short, of the researcher himself”, in Pierre Bourdieu, ‘L’objectivation participante’, (2003) 150 Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 43. This process leads to reflexivity, which calls for the scholar to integrate into the parameters of his analysis every single element derived both from his belonging to a scientific field (with its specific traditions, ways of thinking, issues, shared truths, etc.), and from his individual position in the field, with its specific interests that might influence more or less unconsciously the scientific choices he makes. See ibid. at 47; also see Pierre Bourdieu, Science de la science et réflexivité (Paris: Seuil 2001).

  17. 17.

    Michel Foucault, ‘The Order of Discourse’ in Robert Young (ed.), Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader (Boston/London/Henley: Routledge 1981) 51-52.

  18. 18.

    Eric Weil, ‘Tradition et traditionalisme’, in Eric Weil, Essais et conférences, vol. 2 (Paris: Plon 1971) 16 (this article is translated from an earlier paper in English, ‘Tradition and Traditionalism’, published in (1953) II Confluence 106-116, but to which I have not had access).

  19. 19.

    In his immediate bestseller on the ongoing French Revolution, Burke wrote that “by preserving the method of nature in the conduct of the state, in what we improve we are never wholly new; in what we retain we are never wholly obsolete”. See Edmund Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution (first published 1790; London: J. M. Dent & Sons 1910) 32 (reprint Oxford: OUP 1993).

  20. 20.

    See for instance Alisdair MacIntyre, ‘Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative, and the Philosophy of Science’, (1977) 60 The Monist (Historicism and Epistemology) 453-472; After Virtue – A Study of Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 1981); Which Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 1988).

  21. 21.

    Ibid., After Virtue, 222.

  22. 22.

    Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Inventing Traditions’ (n 15) 1.

  23. 23.

    Ibid.

  24. 24.

    Ibid., 2.

  25. 25.

    Gérard Lenclud, ‘La tradition n’est plus ce qu’elle était… Sur les notions de tradition et de société traditionnelle en ethnologie’, (1987) 9 Terrain – Anthropologie et sciences humaines 12.

  26. 26.

    Unfortunately, I was unable to track this quote, which is cited by Christopher B. Steiner, ‘The Tradition of African Art: Reflections on the Social Life of a Subject’ in Mark Salber Phillips and Gordon Schochet (eds), Questions of Tradition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2004) 92, but who misreferenced the quote. Admittedly, Tylor’s approach does not stand on its own but is part of his theory of “survivals”: according to him, irrational beliefs and customs are the remnants of practices that, earlier in time, were rational. He draws a distinction between those that have preserved the same sense and function they had in the past, and those that, in the present, are no longer useful and are poorly integrated with contemporary social practices. These latter customs and beliefs are called “survivals”. See Edward Burnett Tylor, Primitive Culture (first published 1871; Cambridge: CUP 2010).

  27. 27.

    Marcel Mauss, ‘Les techniques du corps’, (1936) 32 Journal de Psychologie 271-293.

  28. 28.

    Jean Pouillon, ‘Tradition’ in Pierre Bonte and Michel Izard (eds), Dictionnaire de l’ethnologie et de l’anthropologie (Paris: Presses universitaires de France 1991) 710. See also, by the same author, ‘Tradition: transmission ou reconstruction’ in Jean Pouillon, Fétiches sans fétichisme (Paris: Maspero 1975) 155-173; and ‘Plus c’est la même chose, plus ça change’, (1977) 15 Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse 203-211.

  29. 29.

    André Béteille, ‘Science and Tradition: A Sociological Perspective’, (1998) 33 Economic and Political Weekly 529.

  30. 30.

    Nelson H. H. Graburn, ‘What Is Tradition?’, (2001) 24 Museum Anthropology 6.

  31. 31.

    Olivier Morin, How Traditions Live and Die (Oxford: OUP 2016) 4. This book is a translation of the French original version, published under the title Comment les traditions naissent et meurent (Paris: Odile Jacob 2011).

  32. 32.

    Gérard Lenclud, ‘La tradition n’est plus ce qu’elle était…’ (n 25) 1.

  33. 33.

    Eric Weil, ‘Tradition et traditionalisme’ (n 18) 9.

  34. 34.

    Ibid.

  35. 35.

    John R. Searle, ‘The Storm Over the University’, The New York Review of Books, 6 December 1990, at <https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/12/06/the-storm-over-the-university/>.

  36. 36.

    At <http://www.sfdi.org/galerie_internationalistes/>.

  37. 37.

    This, incidentally, is another French “tradition”: we tend to not directly refer to and quote the living. This might be a newer tradition, as scholarship of the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century shows how much academics directly engaged with one another, sometimes in fierce yet generally courteous intellectual fights. Such direct engaging with one another’s work has almost completely vanished, and one could wonder whether this is a cause or a consequence of the overall non-confrontational, non-conflictual and of course supposedly non-violent self-representation of the academic community.

  38. 38.

    Emmanuelle Jouannet, ‘Regards sur un siècle de doctrine française du droit international’, (2000) 46 AFDI 1-57. An English version (though not an exact translation) of her paper was published under the title ‘A Century of French International Law Scholarship’, (2009) 61 MaineLRev 83-132. See also ‘Les visions française et américaine du droit international: cultures juridiques et droit international’ in SFDI, Droit international et diversité des cultures juridiques (Paris: Pedone 2008) 43-90 (also published in English: ‘French and American Perspectives on International Law: Legal Cultures and International Law’, (2006) 58 MaineLRev 291-336).

  39. 39.

    Fabrice Bin, ‘Jean Bodin’, at <http://www.sfdi.org/internationalistes/bodin/>. For Jean Bodin’s concept of sovereignty, see Les six livres de la République (Jacques du Puys 1576; new edition Paris: Fayard 1986).

  40. 40.

    For an analysis of how the French Constitutional Council (mis)understands sovereignty see Andrea Hamann, ‘Sur un sentiment de souveraineté’, (2018) 20-21 Jus Politicum (La jurisprudence du Conseil constitutionnel et les différentes branches du droit) 187-213 (also available at: <http://juspoliticum.com/article/Sur-un-sentiment-de-souverainete-1259.html>).

  41. 41.

    Emanuel Castellarin, ‘Louis Renault’, at <http://www.sfdi.org/internationalistes/renault/>.

  42. 42.

    As opposed to commercial law, on which he published a treatise in eight volumes. Most of his international law writings have been published in three volumes by Albert de Geouffre de La Pradelle, L’œuvre internationale de Louis Renault (1843-1918), in memoriam (Paris: Les Éditions internationales 1932).

  43. 43.

    Emanuel Castellarin, ‘Louis Renault’ (n 41).

  44. 44.

    Ibid.

  45. 45.

    See for instance Antoine Pillet, Les Conférences de La Haye du 29 juillet 1899 et du 18 octobre 1907 – Etude juridique et critique (Paris: Pedone 1918); De l’idée d’une Société des Nations (Paris: Marcel Rivière & Cie 1919); and Le Traité de paix de Versailles – Conférences faites au Collège libre des sciences sociales (Paris: Marcel Rivière & Cie 1920).

  46. 46.

    See his seminal work Principes de droit international privé (Paris: Pedone 1903).

  47. 47.

    Henry Bonfils, Manuel de droit international public (Droit des gens) (Paris: Rousseau & Cie 1894). The narrative in the author’s preface to his textbook is quite remarkable: “may this Textbook convince those who will honor it by reading it that in the constant evolution of International law, France, despite a few momentary missteps, has always been the champion of justice and humanity, and may this Textbook thus provide its readers with new reasons to respect and to cherish their Fatherland”, at viii.

  48. 48.

    Claudine Moutardier, ‘Paul Fauchille’, at <http://www.sfdi.org/internationalistes/fauchille/>. See Fauchille’s Manuel de droit international, 8th entirely new edn of the Manuel de droit international public by Henry Bonfils (Paris: Rousseau & Cie 1920).

  49. 49.

    The terms “master” and “disciple” should not be taken too seriously: while I have indeed often heard colleagues refer to their “master” when speaking about their former PhD supervisor, the word “disciple” used here doesn’t necessarily imply an intellectual filiation or dependence: international law academics were far fewer than nowadays, consequently students aspiring to undertake a PhD therefore had less choice regarding their future “master” – and most of these international law “masters” were at the Paris Law Faculty.

  50. 50.

    Cited by Edoardo Stoppioni, ‘Louis-Erasme Le Fur’, at <http://www.sfdi.org/internationalistes/le-fur-2/>.

  51. 51.

    See his monumental dissertation Etat fédéral et confédération d’Etats (Paris: Marchal et Billard 1896, reprint Paris: Editions Panthéon-Assas 2000), which remains a reference to this day.

  52. 52.

    Ibid., 443.

  53. 53.

    Edoardo Stoppioni, ‘Louis-Erasme Le Fur’ (n 49).

  54. 54.

    Ibid.

  55. 55.

    See for instance his late work ‘La Place de l’homme dans la construction du droit international’, (1948) 1 Current Legal Problems 140-151.

  56. 56.

    Albert de Geouffre de La Pradelle, Maîtres et doctrines du droit des gens: Cours professé à la Faculté de droit de Paris (Paris: Les Editions internationales 1939, 2nd edn 1950). See also ‘L’Institut des Hautes Études Internationales et l’enseignement du droit des gens’ (co-authored with Alejandro Alvarez), (1939) 46 RGDIP 666-669.

  57. 57.

    Jules Basdevant, ‘La conclusion et la rédaction des traités et des actes diplomatiques autres que les traités’, (1926) 15 Hague Academy of International Law Collected Courses 535-667; ‘Règles générales du droit de la Paix’, (1936) 58 Hague Academy of International Law Collected Courses 471-715.

  58. 58.

    François-Xavier Saluden, ‘Jules Basdevant’, at <http://www.sfdi.org/internationalistes/basdevant/>.

  59. 59.

    For a poignant homage to Basdevant, see Charles Chaumont, ‘Jules Basdevant’, (1967) 13 AFDI 1-3.

  60. 60.

    Georges Scelle, ‘In Memoriam – Le professeur Gilbert Gidel’, (1958) 4 AFDI 1.

  61. 61.

    There is, however, his Hague Course on the theory of fundamental rights of the State: ‘Droits et devoirs des Nations – La théorie classique des droits fondamentaux des Etats’, (1925) 10 Hague Academy of International Law Collected Courses 537-600.

  62. 62.

    Gilbert Gidel, Le Droit international public de la Mer: le temps de paix, vol. I: Introduction – La haute mer; vol. II: Les eaux intérieures; vol. III: La mer territoriale et la zone contigüe (Paris: Mellotée 1932-1934).

  63. 63.

    Niki Aloupi, ‘Gilbert Gidel’, at <http://www.sfdi.org/internationalistes/gidel/>.

  64. 64.

    See Georges Scelle, Précis de droit des gens – Principes et systématique, vol. I (Paris: Sirey 1932); Précis de droit des gens – Principes et systématique, vol. II (Paris: Sirey 1934).

  65. 65.

    See for instance René Cassin, ‘La déclaration universelle et la mise en œuvre des droits de l’homme’, (1951) 79 Hague Academy of International Law Collected Courses 237-367; ‘Les droits de l’homme’, (1974) 140 Hague Academy of International Law Collected Courses 321-331.

  66. 66.

    Louis Cavaré, Le droit international public positif – Vol. I: La notion de droit international public. Structure de la société internationale (Paris: Pedone 1951, new editions in 1961 and 1967, 3rd edn updated by Jean-Pierre Quéneudec); Vol. II: Les Modalités des relations juridiques internationals. Les compétences respectives des États (Paris: Pedone 1951, new editions in 1962 and 1969, 3rd edn updated by Jean-Pierre Quéneudec).

  67. 67.

    Loïc Aubanel Le Rhun, ‘Louis Cavaré’, at <http://www.sfdi.org/internationalistes/cavare/>.

  68. 68.

    Charles Rousseau, Traité de droit international: Vol. I: Introduction – Sources (Paris: Sirey 1970); Vol. II: Les sujets de droit (Paris: Sirey 1974); Vol. III: Les compétences (Paris: Sirey 1977); Vol. IV: Les relations internationales (Paris: Sirey 1980); Vol. V: Les rapports conflictuels (Paris: Sirey 1983). The sixth volume was published separately, as it deals with international law in armed conflicts as opposed to the first five on peacetime international law: Le droit des conflits armés (Paris: Pedone 1983). A shorter textbook also preceded the treatise in the 50s: Droit international public approfondi (Paris: Dalloz 1958). This textbook has known an immense success: it was published for eleven editions and, very notably, also translated into Spanish (1966), Japanese (1968), Iranian (1971), and Portuguese (1972).

  69. 69.

    Suzanne Bastid, Les traités dans la vie internationale: conclusion et effets (Paris: Economica 1985).

  70. 70.

    Alain Pellet, ‘Suzanne Bastid’, at <http://www.sfdi.org/internationalistes/bastid/>.

  71. 71.

    André Gros, Survivance de la raison d’Etat (Paris: Dalloz 1932).

  72. 72.

    Ibid., 375.

  73. 73.

    See the voluminous (yet selective) bibliography provided in Jénya Grigorova, ‘Paul Reuter’, at <http://www.sfdi.org/internationalistes/reuter/>.

  74. 74.

    Robert Kolb, Les cours généraux de droit international public de l’Académie de la Haye (Bruxelles: Bruylant/Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles 2003) 368.

  75. 75.

    This appears most clearly in the poignant and quite personal homage to Reuter by one of his former pupils, Jean Combacau (who, although he would certainly challenge the assertion, has himself powerfully influenced contemporary French international law academia for several generations, to the extent that many scholars, more or less rightly, claim a more a less direct filiation): Jean Combacau, ‘Paul Reuter, le juriste’, (1989) 35 AFDI VII-XIX. See also Jénya Grigorova, ‘Paul Reuter’ (n 73).

  76. 76.

    Charles Chaumont, ‘Cours général de droit international public’, (1970) 129 Hague Academy of International Law Collected Courses 335-527.

  77. 77.

    Emmanuelle Jouannet, ‘La pensée juridique de Charles Chaumont’, (2004) 1 RBDI 259-289.

  78. 78.

    See for instance two contemporary scholars from Chaumont’s very own university: Jean-Denis Mouton and Batyah Sierpinski, ‘La pensée juridique de Charles Chaumont’, (2015) 35 Civitas Europa 197-223. See also Alain Pellet, ‘Discours et réalité du droit international – Reims: apport et limite d’une méthode’ in Réalités du droit international contemporain, Actes de la huitième Rencontre de Reims (Reims: CERI 1990) 5-19.

  79. 79.

    Arnaud de Nanteuil, ‘René-Jean Dupuy’, at <http://www.sfdi.org/internationalistes/rene-jean-dupuy/>.

  80. 80.

    See also René-Jean Dupuy, La communauté internationale entre mythe et histoire (Paris: Economica 1986); and Dialectique du droit international – Souveraineté des États, communauté internationale et droits de l’humanité (Paris: Pedone 1999).

  81. 81.

    See for instance René-Jean Dupuy, L’Humanité dans l’imaginaire des nations (Paris: Julliard 1991); ‘L’émergence de l’humanité’ in Federico Mayor Amicorum Liber (Bruxelles: Bruylant 1995) 811-819.

  82. 82.

    With contributions by his son Pierre-Marie Dupuy, Julien Cantegreil, Evelyne Lagrange, and Alix Toublanc, in (2011) 22 EJIL.

  83. 83.

    Julien Cazala, ‘Guy Ladreit de Lacharrière’, at <http://www.sfdi.org/internationalistes/lacharriere-guy-ladreit-de/>. Also see the extensive bibliography provided by Cazala.

  84. 84.

    Guy de Lacharrière, La politique juridique extérieure (Paris: IFRI/Economica 1983). It is an evident testimony to its influence that many renowned French international lawyers have written on this piece of scholarship: see Denis Alland, ‘Quelques réflexions sur la notion de politique juridique de l’État – Retour sur La politique juridique extérieure’, (2012) 13 Annuaire français de relations internationales 555-563; Julien Cazala, ‘Retour sur un classique: Guy de Lacharrière, La politique juridique extérieure’, (2013) 117 RGDIP 411-416; Jean Combacau, ‘Science du droit et politique juridique dans l’enseignement du droit international – À propos de Guy de Lacharrière, ‘La politique juridique extérieure”, (1984) 88 RGDIP 980-989; Alain Pellet, ‘Le Sage, le Prince et le Savant (A propos de ‘La politique juridique extérieure’ de Guy de Lacharrière)’, (1985) 112 Journal du droit international 407-414.

  85. 85.

    Gilles Cottereau (cited by Julien Cazala in ‘Guy Ladreit de Lacharrière’ (n 83)), ‘Vivre et penser le droit international’ in Guy Ladreit de Lacharrière et la politique juridique extérieure de la France (Paris: Masson 1989) 184.

  86. 86.

    Both are apparent in his general course at The Hague Academy, and even in its very title: ‘Panorama du droit international contemporain: Cours général de droit international public’, (1983) 183 Hague Academy of International Law Collected Courses 9-382. See also Michel Virally, La pensée juridique (1960, reprint Paris: Editions Panthéon Assas 2010), which remains a reference to this day.

  87. 87.

    Cited by Anne-Laure Chaumette, ‘Michel Virally’, at <http://www.sfdi.org/internationalistes/virally/>, quoting Michel Virally in ‘Le phénomène juridique’, (1966) 82 Revue du droit public 5-64. See also the article by Jorge Vinuales on Virally’s theoretical tenets: ‘Michel Virally ou penser le phénomène juridique’, (2009) 55 AFDI 1-38.

  88. 88.

    Daniel Bardonnet, ‘In Memoriam: Le Professeur Michel Virally (1922-1989)’, (1988) 34 AFDI 11.

  89. 89.

    Michel Virally, ‘A propos de la ‘lex ferenda” in Mélanges offerts à Paul Reuter – Le droit international: unité et diversité (Paris: Pedone 1981) 519.

  90. 90.

    Prosper Weil, ‘Vers une normativité relative en droit international?’, (1982) 86 RGDIP 5-47. This paper was also famously published in English: ‘Towards Relative Normativity in International Law?’, (1983) 77 AJIL 413-442.

  91. 91.

    There is, however, a form of homage/necrology by the president of the SFDI, Alain Pellet, at <http://www.sfdi.org/deces-de-prosper-weil/>.

  92. 92.

    Prosper Weil, ‘Le droit international en quête de son identité’, (1992) 237 Hague Academy of International Law Collected Courses 13-369.

  93. 93.

    Jean Combacau, Journée d’étude en hommage à Prosper Weil, 3 October 2019 (the proceedings of the colloquium should be published soon).

  94. 94.

    Ibid.

  95. 95.

    Emmanuelle Jouannet, ‘Regards sur un siècle de doctrine française’ (n 38) 7.

  96. 96.

    Ibid., 57 (emphasis in the text).

  97. 97.

    Georges Balandier, Tradition et modernité: Problèmes théoriques – Illustrations africaines (“polycopié” of his course taught in 1966-1967 at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris); Anthropologie politique (Paris: Presses universitaires de France 1967, reprint 2013), chapter VII.

  98. 98.

    Ibid.

  99. 99.

    Ibid.

  100. 100.

    Once again I refer to Bourdieu’s objectivation participante, which emphasizes the value for any researcher and intellectual of realizing that they are part of a national scientific field, “with its traditions, its modes of thinking, its issues, its shared certainties”, and of equally realizing that every one of us occupies a specific position in this field, with specific interests that will even unconsciously orientate our scientific choices (Pierre Bourdieu, ‘L’objectivation participante’ (n 15) 47).

  101. 101.

    Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Paris: Seuil 1957, new edition Paris: Points 2014) 45.

  102. 102.

    See for instance Pascal Boyer, Tradition as Truth and Communication: A Cognitive Description of Traditional Discourse (Cambridge: CUP 1990); Dan Sperber, La contagion des idées (Paris: Odile Jacob 1996).

  103. 103.

    Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Inventing Traditions’ (n 15) 2.

  104. 104.

    Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York/London: Routledge 2002) 21.

  105. 105.

    John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (London: Penguin Books 1995) 118.

  106. 106.

    Edward Shils, ‘Tradition’, (1971) 13 Comparative Studies in Society and History 133. See also, by the same author, Tradition (Chicago: Chicago University Press 1981).

  107. 107.

    Arnold Van Gennep as quoted by Olivier Morin, Comment les traditions naissent et meurent (n 31) 49.

  108. 108.

    Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits (first published 1878; Edinburgh: T.N. Foulis, 1910) 95. Quite similar are Bourdieu’s words about what he calls “prophetic discourse” (very powerfully expressed in French: “Le propre du discours prophétique est d’arracher complètement les croyants à toute inquiétude concernant le sens du monde”, in Pierre Bourdieu, Sociologie générale vol. 1 (n 9) 115). See also Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, The Enigma of Reason (n 14) 243-244: they convincingly demonstrate that like-minded people will only ever “provide each other with reasons supporting already held beliefs.”

  109. 109.

    Pierre Bourdieu, Science de la science et réflexivité (n 16) 152. Elsewhere he went even further, specifically zooming in on the world of the law: “the tacit belief in the legal order constantly needs to be renewed, and it is one of the main functions of the genuinely legal work to codify representations and ethic practices in order to convince the uninitiated and the non-believers to adhere to the very foundations of the lawyers’ professional ideology, i.e. the belief in the neutrality and autonomy of the law and of lawyers.” See Pierre Bourdieu, La force du droit – Eléments pour une sociologie du champ juridique (Paris: Editions de la Sorbonne 2017) 65 (first published in (1986) 64 Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 3-19).

  110. 110.

    Durkheim powerfully wrote that “men generally have the desire for self-instruction only in so far as they are freed from the yoke of tradition; for as long as the latter governs intelligence, it is all-sufficient and jealous of any rival”, in Emile Durkheim, Suicide – A Study in Sociology (first published 1897; London: Routledge 2002) 116.

  111. 111.

    Pascal Boyer, ‘Tradition et vérité’, (1986) 26 L’Homme (L’anthropologie: état des lieux) 309-329.

  112. 112.

    Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach, The Knowledge Illusion – The Myth of Individual Thought and the Power of Collective Wisdom (New York: Pan Books 2017) 255.

  113. 113.

    Dan Sperber, La contagion des idées (n 102). His entire book is grounded in the expression, foundational to his theory, but see in particular 8-11, 39-41 and 79-105.

  114. 114.

    Olivier Morin, Comment les traditions naissent et meurent (n 31) 48.

  115. 115.

    Dan Sperber, La contagion des idées (n 102), 83.

  116. 116.

    Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach, The Knowledge Illusion (n 112) 224.

  117. 117.

    John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (n 105) 104-112.

  118. 118.

    For instance, Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1962). See also ‘The Function of Dogma in Scientific Research’ in Alistair C. Crombie (ed.), Scientific Change: Historical Studies in the Intellectual, Social and Technical Conditions for Scientific Discovery and Technical Invention, from Antiquity to the Present (London: Heinemann 1963) 347-369.

  119. 119.

    Andrea Bianchi, ‘Epistemic Communities’ in Jean d’Aspremont and Sahib Singh (eds), Concepts for International Law – Contributions to Disciplinary Thought (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar 2018) 252.

  120. 120.

    John R. Searle, Making the Social World (Oxford: OUP 2010) 155-160. Interestingly Searle calls American academics an “extremely conformist group”, in the sense that their education trains them to accept a set of assumptions and presuppositions (at 159, margin note 11), but one could easily extend this analysis to any number of countries and Backgrounds, French international law education being no exception.

  121. 121.

    Andrea Bianchi, ‘Epistemic Communities’ (n 119) 265.

  122. 122.

    Pierre Bourdieu, Sociologie générale vol. 1 (n 9) 113, and 126-130. On epistemological fights, see 442-445.

  123. 123.

    Roland Barthes, ‘La division des langages’ in Roland Barthes, Le bruissement de la langue – Essais critiques IV (n 4) 129.

  124. 124.

    Jean Rivero, ‘Apologie pour les ‘faiseurs de système”, (1951) 23 Dalloz 99-102; also published in André de Laubadère et al., Pages de doctrine (Paris: LGDJ 1980) 3-10.

  125. 125.

    Alain Pellet, ‘Le mot de rentrée du Président: Crise ou effondrement du droit international?’, 19 September 2018, at <http://www.sfdi.org/le-mot-de-rentree-du-president/>.

  126. 126.

    Alain Pellet, ‘Values and Power Relations – The ‘Disillusionment’ of International Law?’, KFG Working Paper Series, no. 34, May 2019, available at <https://www.kfg-intlaw.de/Publications/working_papers.php?ID=1, and http://alainpellet.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Conf-Berlin-2019.pdf>.

  127. 127.

    Alain Pellet, ‘Le mot de rentrée du Président’ (n 125).

  128. 128.

    Ibid., as translated in ‘Values and Power Relations – The ‘Disillusionment’ of International Law?’ (n 126) 6.

  129. 129.

    Alain Pellet, ‘Le mot de rentrée du Président’ (n 125).

  130. 130.

    Pierre Bourdieu, Sociologie générale vol. 2 – Cours au Collège de France 1983-1986 (Paris: Seuil 2016) 738, and Sociologie générale vol. 1 (n 9) 617-618.

  131. 131.

    In French, “épidémiologie des croyances”.

  132. 132.

    Dan Sperber, La contagion des idées (n 102), specifically chapter IV, 108-135.

  133. 133.

    Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach, The Knowledge Illusion (n 112) 222.

  134. 134.

    Particularly noteworthy is Jean Combacau’s ‘Logique de validité contre logique d’opposabilité dans la Convention de Vienne sur le droit des traités’ in Mélanges Virally (Paris: Pedone 1991) 195-203. Also see Michel Virally, ‘Norme fondamentale hypothétique et droit international’ in Recueil d’études en hommage à Charles Eisenmann (Paris: Cujas 1975), 453-467.

  135. 135.

    See ILC, Guide to Practice on Reservations to Treaties, 2011. The intensive focus on the validity of reservations and the consequences of invalid reservations to a certain extent is even quite amusing, when one considers that France (like many countries) is in the habit of objecting to reservations by declaring that they consider the reservation to be contrary to the object and purpose to the treaty (which should thus be grounds for invalidity, if one takes the Vienna Convention seriously) but that they nonetheless do not object to the reserving State becoming a party to the treaty and being bound vis-à-vis one another… See also Mathias Forteau, ‘Quelles conséquences pour les réserves non valides?’ in SFDI, Actualités des réserves aux traités (Paris: Pedone 2014) 87-92.

  136. 136.

    Incidentally, the same could be said about other notions that French international lawyers are particularly fond of, for instance “compétence” (jurisdiction), or “juridiction” (court or tribunal).

  137. 137.

    John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (n 102) 27.

  138. 138.

    John R. Searle, Making the Social World (n 120) 84.

  139. 139.

    Incidentally, it was Duguit who crafted the notion of “acte-condition”, in his famous tripartite classification of “legal acts” where he distinguishes “acte-règle”, “acte-condition” and “acte subjectif”. See for instance in Léon Duguit, Traité de droit constitutionnel, vol. I (Paris: E. de Boccard 2nd edn 1921) 219-227; or Leçons de droit public général (first published Paris: E. de Boccard 1926; reprint Paris: La Mémoire du Droit 2000) 73-81.

  140. 140.

    A striking example can be found in the 1995 ICJ East Timor judgment, regarding the erga omnes character of the right to self-determination. Para. 29 of the French version reads as follows: “le droit des peuples à disposer d’eux-mêmes (…) est un droit opposable erga omnes (…). Toutefois, la Cour estime que l’opposabilité erga omnes d’une norme et la règle du consentement à la jurisdiction sont deux choses différentes” (emphasis added). By contrast, the English version simply says “the right of peoples to self-determination (…) has an erga omnes character (…). However, the Court considers that the erga omnes character of a norm and the rule of consent to jurisdiction are two different things” (emphasis added). Character and opposabilité are nowhere close to being synonyms, and yet the translators have preferred this word over the exact French equivalent “caractère”. See ICJ, East Timor (Portugal v. Australia), judgment of 30 June 1995.

  141. 141.

    John L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1962). For once I favor the French translation of the title, which is much more powerful than the original: Quand dire, c’est faire (Paris: Seuil 1970).

  142. 142.

    Bourdieu even emphasized that the law is the ultimate form of acting discourse, in the sense that it is able, of its own force, to produce effects; in fact, it literally makes the social world. See Pierre Bourdieu, La force du droit – Eléments pour une sociologie du champ juridique (n 109) 23.

  143. 143.

    Oscar Schachter, ‘The Invisible College of International Lawyers’, (1977) 72 Northwestern University Law Review 217-226.

  144. 144.

    Ibid., 217.

  145. 145.

    See Lex Villia Annalis, 180 BC.

  146. 146.

    Pierre Bourdieu, Sociologie générale vol. 1 (n 9) 137.

  147. 147.

    See also Pierre Bourdieu, La force du droit – Eléments pour une sociologie du champ juridique (n 109) 62-63. Bourdieu indeed had a particular fascination for the law and the world of the law, a world in which most propositions of his general theory could easily be verified. In this instance he observes that, in the social groups engaging with the law, proximity of interests and affinity of habitus will powerfully promote close kinship between approaches of the law.

  148. 148.

    In a similar vein, it is quite unsettling to find high government officials as the authors of pieces for major law journals, especially on particularly crucial and highly sensitive topics of international law. For a quite recent example, see François Alabrune, ‘Le cadre juridique des actions militaires menées par la France en Syrie le 14 avril 2018’, (2018) 122 RGDIP 545-548, in which the director of the legal affairs division of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs addresses the legality of France’s military strikes in Syria in 2018. Any reader should at least feel uneasy about such “official” (i.e. governmental) discourse on international law in an academic journal, and suspect that by the very function of their author such publications can hardly be truly critical, unless of course the author is willing to be instantly relieved of their functions. Similarly, see Marilyne Grange, ‘Position française à l’égard de la Syrie en 2018: des frappes légitimes, et après?’, (2018) 64 AFDI 734-748. The first footnote, as is usual, gives information about the author’s current academic position, which conveniently allows for omitting to mention her previous position in the legal affairs division of the Quai d’Orsay. Incidentally the reader should note that the author provides an analysis in which the concept of legitimacy obliterates that of legality, and operates as a substitute. This alone should make the reader wonder about how discourse on international law is subtly mainstreamed, in order to conform to the official version. Such interpenetration of government functions and legal scholarship is by no means distinctly French, and touches upon a much broader issue of professional ethics. See for instance Daniel Bethlehem, ‘Self-Defense Against an Imminent or Actual Armed Attack by Non-State Actors’, (2012) 106 AJIL 770-777, a piece published about a year after its author left his position as Legal Adviser to the UK Government. Interestingly yet unsurprisingly, the piece advocates exactly the position that was later endorsed by the UK Attorney General in his famous 2017 speech at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in which the AG actually quotes Bethlehem by name and extensively engages with the ideas laid out in his 2012 paper (the speech is available at <https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/attorney-generals-speech-at-the-international-institute-for-strategic-studies>).

  149. 149.

    Dan Ben-Amos, ‘The Seven Strands of Tradition: Varieties in its Meaning in American Folklore Studies’, (1984) 21 Journal of Folklore Research 104. See also David Berliner, ‘Anthropologie et transmission’, (2010) 55 Terrain – Anthropologie et sciences humaines 4-19.

  150. 150.

    Olivier Morin is representative of this more recent line of research. He gives an extensive account of the state of the art in his book How Traditions Live and Die (n 31).

  151. 151.

    Pascal Boyer, Minds Make Societies – How Cognition Explains the World We Create (New Haven: Yale University Press 2018).

  152. 152.

    Jean Combacau, ‘Paul Reuter, le juriste’ (n 75) X-XI.

  153. 153.

    Pierre Bourdieu, Sociologie générale vol. 2 (n 130) 742-744.

  154. 154.

    Guy de Lacharrière, ‘Enseignement et recherche en matière de droit international: les besoins de l’administration’ in L’enseignement et la recherche en droit international en France face aux besoins de la pratique (Paris: Dalloz 1968). Incidentally, these are the proceedings of a 1967 workshop in Strasbourg entirely dedicated to the problems of international law teachings and research with regard to practice, which, in its immediate aftermath, brought about the creation of the French Society.

  155. 155.

    Pierre Bourdieu, Sociologie générale vol. 1 (n 9) 122-125. See also his ‘Les rites comme actes d’institution’, (1982) 43 Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 58-63.

  156. 156.

    See John R. Searle, Making the Social World (n 120) 105.

  157. 157.

    Ibid., 150.

  158. 158.

    Ibid., 159.

  159. 159.

    Stuart Firestein, Ignorance – How It Drives Science (New York: OUP 2012).

  160. 160.

    See <https://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/archive/winter12/columbia_forum>.

  161. 161.

    Eric Weil, ‘Tradition et traditionalisme’ (n 18) 12-14.

  162. 162.

    Ibid.

  163. 163.

    Claude Lévi-Strauss, La pensée sauvage (Paris: Plon 1962, new edition Paris: Pocket 1990) 312-331.

  164. 164.

    Pierre Bourdieu, ‘La société traditionnelle – Attitude à l’égard du temps et conduite économique’, (1963) 5 Sociologie du Travail 42. This should be understood on the background of his distinction between ethos and attitudes, see for instance Pierre Bourdieu, Le désenchantement du monde – Travail et travailleurs en Algérie (Paris: Mouton & Cie 1966). For a similar argument see John R. Searle, who articulates this in terms of power: he argues that power is subtly yet forcefully exerted when our background shapes our desires or determines and thus limits our “perception of the available options”, in Making the Social World (n 120) 160.

  165. 165.

    Gabriel Gosselin, ‘Tradition et traditionalisme’, (1975) 16 Revue française de sociologie 218.

  166. 166.

    Paul Ricoeur, ‘Quel ethos nouveau pour l’Europe?’ in Peter Koslowski (ed.), Imaginer l’Europe – Le marché intérieur européen, tâche culturelle et économique (Paris: Cerf 1992) 112. See also ‘Identité narrative et communauté historique’, (1994) Cahier de Politique Autrement (special issue October 1994, reprint 2016).

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  1. University of Strasbourg, Faculty of Law (CEIE – EA 7307), Strasbourg, France

    Andrea Hamann

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  1. Italian Law, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

    Peter Hilpold

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I am deeply indebted to my students, whose questions, remarks, and reactions—not limited to international law—have helped me become aware of our tradition(s) and engage with them in more ways that I could imagine. This paper is dedicated to them.

Most translations of citations of French authors reproduced in this paper are by me, unless the reference given is the officially published English translation of the original work.

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Hamann, A. (2021). The French Tradition of International Law. In: Hilpold, P. (eds) European International Law Traditions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52028-1_5

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