The Transformation of International Organizations Law: A Rejoinder

In 1974, the renowned cultural historian Peter Gay published a lovely book under the title Style in History.1 Dissecting the work of four famous historians, he contended that their writing style and their substantive thoughts go hand in hand or, more accu rately perhaps, that style is not just ornamental but is itself part of the substance. Style and substance cannot be separated. It seems André Nollkaemper suggests something similar about ‘The EJIL Foreword: The Transformation of International Organizations Law’2 but with a twist.3 In my case, it seems, style ‘serves as a method to prevent engagement with substance’, perhaps because I might think that all law is indeter minate and, thus, no cognizable substance can be found with which to begin. In my case, so Nollkaemper suggests, the substance is actually devoid of substance. Put like this, the point is surely untenable. I actually say a lot about the law of inter national organizations, and while not always very certain, settled or precise, this body of law, nonetheless, is just as substantive as, say, international criminal law or the law of the sea.4 The fact that I treat much of the substantive law as relatively openended should not be mistaken for a radical dismissal of anything substantive. What Nollkaemper correctly points out, though, is that I do not pay much atten tion to the output or effectiveness of the work of international organizations. Mine is a theoretical exercise, aiming to lay bare how functionalism is structured and where its weak spots are. More importantly perhaps, functionalism is itself predominantly a normative approach; in an important sense, the theory has little interest in whether international organizations actually do what they were set up to do or whether the ‘salvation of mankind’ will ever be achieved. Perhaps for this reason, Nollkaemper voices some doubts (as does Guy Fiti Sinclair) about whether functionalism is properly