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A New Philosophy for International Law
Author(s) -
DWORKIN RONALD
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
philosophy and public affairs
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.388
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1088-4963
pISSN - 0048-3915
DOI - 10.1111/papa.12008
Subject(s) - citation , law , philosophy , sociology , library science , political science , computer science
Dean, Secretary General, professors, students, friends, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for this honor. By awarding me a degree of this university you make me one of you and I’m proud to join you and I thank you. As for professor Alegre’s summary of my work, may I say, I never liked my ideas so much as when I heard him describe them. So I’m very glad for that, it was very quite wonderful. I wanted this evening to say a little bit about international law. I represent a citizen of one country, I come here, you are part of the international community, more responsive and aware of your role in that respect than most citizens of my country are. And international law, I believe, will become a matter of increasing importance, indeed perhaps one day of paramount importance to the survival of our civilizations. When I was first taught about international law I was in Oxford, as you can gather, almost a hundred years ago. And at that time the most important question that my teachers addressed was “is there any such thing as international law?” That was a question bound to appear on the examination paper, so we paid a lot of attention to it. That doesn’t seem any longer to be a pertinent question. All international lawyers or statesmen or Ministers of State seem to assume that there is international law and that, for example, the statutes and edicts of the United Nations are part of international law. But old philosophical puzzles are never solved. They simply go out of fashion. And the worries that come to the question “is there any such thing as international law” are still vivid. The great importance to my mind and thinking about what international law properly understood really is, comes when we must interpret what we say is international law, we must interpret it and apply it to the most politically charged issues. For example, just now there is much debate about the status under the laws of war and under the Geneva Conventions of international terrorist organizations, that don’t occupy any territory and whose soldiers do not wear uniforms. The question arises: