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High Stakes and Persistent Challenges – A Rejoinder to Klabbers and Augsberg

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2015

JAKOB V. H. HOLTERMANN  and
MIKAEL RASK MADSEN
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Abstract

In this separate rejoinder to Jan Klabbers' and Ino Augsberg's comments to the articles in the symposium on New Legal Realism in International Law (Leiden Journal of International Law, Volume 28:2, 2015), we respond from the point of view of the European New Legal Realism (ENLR) as propounded in our initial contribution to the symposium. Agreeing with Ingo Venzke who wrote in his introduction to the symposium that ‘stakes are high’ in the debate over international law and methodology, we argue that both Klabbers and Augsberg, each in their own way, fail to take sufficiently seriously the ENLR challenge to doctrinal scholarship. We argue that Klabbers underestimates the evergreen and persistent character of this challenge when he portrays the current push for New Legal Realism as merely a whimsy fashion wave. And we argue that Augsberg's essentially Kelsenian defence of doctrinal scholarship is insufficiently robust because it inherits the excess epistemological liberalism of its underlying Neo-Kantianism.

Keywords

Alf RossHans Kelsenlegal realismMax WeberPierre Bourdieu
Type
INTERNATIONAL LAW AND ITS METHODOLOGY
Information
Leiden Journal of International Law , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , September 2015 , pp. 487 - 493
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law 2015 

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References

1 Shaffer, G. C., ‘The New Legal Realist Approach to International Law’, (2015) 28 LJIL 189CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Ibid.

3 Holtermann, J v. H. and Madsen, M. R., ‘European New Legal Realism and International Law: How to Make International Law Intelligible’, (2015) 28 LJIL 211CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 M. Weber, Critique of Stammler (1977), 129.

5 Dezalay, Y. and Madsen, M. R., ‘The Force of Law and Lawyers: Pierre Bourdieu and the Reflexive Sociology of Law’, (2012) 8 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 436CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 For example Klabbers, J., ‘Counter-Disciplinarity’, (2010) 4 International Political Sociology 308CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Klabbers, J., ‘The Bridge Crack'd: A Critical Look at Interdisciplinary Relations’, (2009) 23 International Relations 119CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 This is however also generally true for the American variant. Please see rejoinder by Gregory Shaffer in this issue.

8 Klabbers, J., ‘Whatever Happened to Gramsci? Some Reflections on New Legal Realism’, (2015) 28 LJIL 469CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.

11 Augsberg, I., ‘Von Einem neuerdings erhobenen empiristischen Ton in der Rechtswissenschaft’, (2012) 51 Der Staat 117CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 ‘[I]f we want to analyse how (international) law is produced and what effects it has, the first thing we have to do is to acknowledge that law exists in its own distinct mode of reality. Otherwise there would not be anything left to analyse. Our object of analysis would simply disappear’ (at 463); ‘[E]ven an empiricist should accept that the legal illusion is real’ (at 463); and ‘[Y]ou cannot talk about the production and the effects of law without having a concept of law’ (at 461). Augsberg, I., ‘Some Realism About New Legal Realism: What's New, What's Legal, What's Real?’, (2015) 28 LJIL 457CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 H. Kelsen, General Theory of Law and State (2009), especially Part One, XII. Normative and sociological jurisprudence.

14 Kelsen, H., ‘Eine “Realistische” und die Reine Rechtslehre. Bemerkungen zu Alf Ross: On Law and Justice’, (1959–60) 10 Österreichische Zeitschrift Fur Offentliches Recht 1Google Scholar.

15 See Kelsen, General Theory of Law and State, supra note 13, 177.

16 See Augsberg, supra note 11, at xxx.

17 Venzke, I., ‘International Law and its Methodology: Introducing a New Leiden Journal of International Law Series’ (2015) 28 LJIL 185CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 187 (emphasis added).