Abstract
As international lawyers, we know what international law is. But how should we approach “tradition?” Tradition, after all, is not a concept that has any meaning or relevance in the universe of the law, as long as the law is understood as it dominantly is as a set of rules produced according to certain predetermined formal processes. As a matter of fact, “tradition” has no existence at all in the formal universe of the law. How, then, can we address the (French) tradition of international law when our own disciplinary field does not provide us with the most elementary theoretical tools to analyze and, more crucially, to even define “tradition?” These tools must therefore be found elsewhere. The approach taken in this essay has thus resolutely set aside our own disciplinary field—international law—and has inquired into those other academic fields that scientifically engage with tradition. Rather than focusing on the content of tradition, disciplinary fields such as anthropology or sociology investigate the modus operandi of tradition, its fashioners and followers, its patterns and transmission processes.
Consequently, this essay shifts the focus from the substance of the French tradition of international law to an investigation into the role of transmission of disciplinary culture and the modus operandi of that tradition, i.e., the social and psychological mechanisms and processes by which traditions come into being and survive. The way in which we, as teachers, scholars, and practitioners, hand down our knowledge of international law to current and future generations of international lawyers is culturally determined. Examined through the looking glass of the rituals, cultural attitudes, and social practices of the French international lawyers’ community, tradition appears to reflect vested interests and extant power structures. Deeply committed to its own preservation, tradition can be portrayed as a collective illusion or belief, as a form of constitutive narrative that constructs the self-representation and orders the everyday activities of international lawyers. Such beliefs are shaped and sustainably developed over time by epistemic communities that rely on discrete power structures and appear committed to maintaining the status quo.
Drawing insight from other disciplines, I argue that tradition shapes an inside/outside perspective and determines a dramatically different perception between the quasi-religious value of a certain narrative to the insiders to a tradition and, conversely, the diluted or quasi-transparent mark that the very same narrative imprints on the outside. Traditionalism fails to recognize itself as choice, and it thrives on its being unaware of itself. Ultimately, the point is to raise awareness about competing traditions and approaches to international law. The “standardized discourse” (la perception homologuée) indeed forcefully reveals how much the dominant discourse operates as a nondiscourse, by disqualifying or even silencing different postures and dissonant voices.
Hopefully, by engaging in such self-reflection, one may become aware of the extent to which we all are the product of national traditions, whose rules and constraints determine how we think about international law.