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‘The Lady Doth Protest Too Much’ Kosovo, and the Turn to Ethics in International Law
Author(s) -
Koskenniemi Martti
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
the modern law review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.37
H-Index - 22
eISSN - 1468-2230
pISSN - 0026-7961
DOI - 10.1111/1468-2230.00373
Subject(s) - charter , moral relativism , law , alliance , political science , competence (human resources) , argumentative , privilege (computing) , power (physics) , sociology , psychology , social psychology , physics , morality , quantum mechanics
Most international lawyers approved of the 1999 bombing of Serbia by the members of the North Atlantic alliance. But most of them also felt that it was not compatible with a strict reading of the UN Charter. The article describes the argumentative techniques through which international lawyers tried to accommodate their moral intuitions with their professional competence. The urge to achieve this, the article argues, arose from a general turn to ethics in the profession that has been evident since the end of the Cold War. This has often involved a shallow and dangerous moralisation which, if generalised, transforms international law into an uncritical instrument for the foreign policy choices of those whom power and privilege has put into decision‐making positions.