Symposium : A Colloquium on International Law Textbooks in England, France and Germany

• Carty, A

Abstract

This paper attempts to justify the claim that there are profound differences in the conception of the system of international law in the textbooks of various European countries. This is despite considerable cooperation among distinguished jurisconsults in the context of the European Union and the International Court of Justice. The paper undertakes an inevitably controversial account of the method of a leading French textbook on international law alongside a leading German textbook, while placing them both in the context of a more representative selection of textbooks from the two countries. A method of comparative analysis is then used which draws from political theory to highlight more systematically the intellectual context of the two works. The conclusion is that the resolution of the differences between the two works rests outside the discipline, when understood strictly, in so far as they are rooted in divergences of traditions of state and nation. These can only be resolved as a matter of political decision in favour of 'an ever closer union' of European states. There are great strengths in both works and European intellectual traditions should be well able to accommodate them in a new synthesis, given a will to closer political union.