The unhappy marriage between international relations theory and international law

Abstract

As the world moves into a particularly fluid phase of global politics, interdisciplinary engagement between international law and international relations is becoming a critical task. Reformulating how we theorise the 'global' will be central to the development of institutions, laws, policies, and norms that govern how we manage conflict, deal with environmental challenges, smooth out the highly uneven political economy, and allow new political communities to develop beyond the nation-state. The role of international law and international relations scholarship will be central to this endeavour. Practitioners and policymakers have a particular responsibility to help develop and shape new global systems and institutions. Teachers have a responsibility to current and future generations of young scholars to equip them with the requisite intellectual tools for making choices in the policy arena that frequently straddle the various levels of international law and international relations. This article explores how we can begin to improve that process.