Abstract
AbstractScholars today discuss international law from various methodological angles. This Article aims to add perspectives from cognitive science, namely cognitive sociology and cognitive linguistics, or, to be more precise, cognitive pragmatics. It briefly elaborates on these fields’ respective approaches, benefits, and limits. To clearly delineate the usefulness of the methodologies, this Article separately applies both approaches to the same example of a process of interpretation in international law. This Article concludes that the two cognitive approaches can help lawyers better understand and implement international law. This not only provides a description of the process of interpretation, but will hopefully enable a better practice of international law.
Highlights
Scholars today discuss international law from various methodological angles
Approaches to international law based on non-cognitive sociology and linguistics already exist
These have already proven their worth for studying international law
Summary
Under a classic doctrinal approach, we would at this point look at the mentioned legal provision, Article 22 of the Third Geneva Convention This prescribes the following: Prisoners of war may be interned only in premises located on land and affording every guarantee of hygiene and healthfulness. A competing view suggests that all of these elements are to be taken in conjunction for the purposes of interpretation; the ordinary meaning is not to be taken separately, but constitutes only a “very fleeting starting point.” It is not difficult to see that Aust’s pragmatic approach of reading an implied term into a treaty (“ : : : one could probably imply a term : : : ”) conflicts with the view that the treaty text is of primary importance. By looking again at our example, we can highlight the use of a cognitive sociological approach to international law
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