On the magic mountain: teaching public international law

In this essay, the author identifies a malaise in the teaching of international law resulting from a fear of being consigned to the academic peripheries. This fear arises from a sense that international lawyers are deemed not sufficiently like 'real' lawyers by some of our colleagues in the law schools and not savvy enough about global realities according to some international relations scholars. The response to these fears sometimes involves a series of compromises with 'legalism' and 'realism'. The consequences of these compromises include theoretical incoherence and a depoliticization of the subject matter. These theoretical failures drive teachers towards a mode that the author calls 'romantic'. The romantic mode is alluring but superficial and ultimately threatens to further empty international law of political content. The author suggests three possible solutions to these problems. The first is to adopt a more integrated theoretical approach to the teaching of international law. The second is to embrace a more explicitly political method in which the teaching of international law is capable of being an imaginative act of dissent. Finally, the author suggests a way of teaching context that avoids what is described as the romantic malaise.