Emmanuel Roucounas, A Landscape of Contemporary Theories of International Law

Abstract

1. Most of us as practitioners of international law tend to ignore and even dismiss theory or the theoretical underpinnings of the discipline. This lack of understanding of the true and intimate relationship between theory and practice results in a situation, aptly described by the German saying, in which “theory is when one knows everything, and nothing happens [while] practice is when everything functions and nobody knows why” (p.5). We owe a debt of gratitude to Professor Emmanuel Roucounas for piecing together the doctrinal and theoretical foundations of international law in his book, A Landscape of Contemporary Theories of International Law. According to him, the current landscape of the theory of public international law “may be envisioned as comprising a rambling choir group of teachers, judges, lawyers, governmental and international agents, as well as philosophers and other thinkers of social sciences” (Preface, p. XVI). “The book aims”, in his...