Articles
Abstract
The question asked by this article is whether it is possible to adopt a conception of international law based in one way or another on a species of legal realism. The suggested exploration revolves around Ross' association with Scandinavian legal realism and the quest for a consistent expression that this association would then take in Ross' dealings with the law of nations. After presenting Ross' legal realism as essentially guided by a metatheoretical standpoint in turn dictated by an implicit allegiance to philosophical positivism, the article reconstructs the meanders of the critique of international law and its subsequent reconstruction as flowing from Ross' legal scientism. Against a background of various shades of realism in legal theory, I finally and forcefully propose a confrontation between Ross and three other figures of the legal-realist pantheon, in search of a form of lineage between legal and political realism that may support the coherence of Alf Ross' theoretical trajectory. Thus treated, the initial question ends up being far more significant on its own than through the answers it apparently fails to find along the way.
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