Dialogue of Two Editors. The three fellows who normally dine are slumbering over the Madeira. The two editors, a naive positivist and a wily crit, remain awake, discussing their project, The Cambridge Companion to International Law. After extended discussion and many trade-offs the slate of writers has been selected β a bit like party-appointed arbitrators jockeying for a president, sixteen times.
There remains the cover: what story will it tell? But the positivist is on home turf: he controls the overhead projector. The positivist presses the button and speaks:. Remember the origins of our subject β War and Peace. De Jure belli ac Pacis. You, Martti, have led the largest insurgency against international law since Emmanuel Kant.
If anyone can picket you can. But look β the Crits are worried about being suddenly attacked from behind by the Positivists. There is palpable tension in the air βthat is what our book is about. The Positivists are too busy counting rules, or money. Your insurgent picket is a mere ideological construct, a nationalist in search of utopia and finding only a dusty steppe. I want real life, a village, somewhere peaceful. Together with its avid consumers of international lawβ¦ No doubt the couple leaning against the wall are discussing whether Hersch Lauterpacht can really be described as a Victorian.
The seated gentleman is thinking about EU fisheries quotas. And the lady in the foreground is lamenting that Eunomia is out of print. A bit too pedestrian for my taste. And Philip, telling that nice girl the plot of his third novel. No international law is needed β neither at picnics, parties nor what follows. Give me war! A combination of modernism and warfare but then you dislike both, I remember now. And think of the legal issues!
Ruses de guerre. You will no doubt be familiar with Annex to Hague Convention No. You are fixated on rules. I want the international lawyer flying free, unconstrained, his hair flowing in the wind. And at least, my dear colleague, I still have hair to flow!
