The Interaction between International and Domestic Legal Orders: Framing the Debate according to the Post-Modern Condition of International Law

Abstract

The interaction between international and domestic legal systems underwent a deep structural change. By means of a literature review concerned with a critical approach of International Law, this Article presents three perspectives: Modern, Imperial Post-Modern, and Deconstructive Post-Modern. Traditional international law scholarship emphasizes the first and the second trends, while this Article presents the third. While the first frames these interactions on the monism-dualism debate, the second establishes an international law prevailing unconditionally over domestic law, international human rights. The third criticizes whether it is still proper to search for ana priorisolution for this interaction. By rejecting global governance and the truly common law as alternatives to imperial post-modern international law, this Article emphasizes that legal analysis should identify, stimulate and reinforce thea posterioricustomary normative spontaneity of multitude. This Article argues that a serious post-modern international law should be guided by a radical political drive of law, foster a deconstructive interaction of different—spatial, temporal or thematic—representations of law and reject traditional hierarchical solutions and any kind of previous, single and exclusive—national or international—authority between any legal order.