To Tame and to Frame

Abstract

I have a marked sympathy for the Heidelberg group’s efforts, in recent years, to conceive and construct a more encompassing rule-bound international sphere and to unite concepts from European public law with those from political and social science. I am pleased to be able to offer my comments on their paper, “Developing the Publicness of Public International Law,” though I am something of an outsider, not formally trained in international law or well-versed in the current debates and literature, and I run the risk of occasionally missing the mark. As a scholar with a general background in law, economics, sociology, social history, and political science, I have, for a number of years, been heading an interdisciplinary institute whose mission is to track the post-1970s development of OECD nation states and gauge the extent and consequences of the privatization and internationalization of responsibilities. My remarks here, which focus on seven of the nine topics I covered at the workshop, are thus concerned with the basic tenants of analytically taming and legally framing international politics, rather than with the legal nuts and bolts.

I would like to thank Professor Gerd Winter from the Bremen University Law School for educating me on several key points discussed here, though he may well not be in agreement on some of my comments and should in no way be held responsible. Thanks also to Susan Gaines for helping me to clarify my thoughts and put them in intelligible English for this written commentary.