The Sentimental Life of International Law: Literature, Language, and Longing in World Politics

— —

Gerry Simpson (Professor of International Law, Professor of International Law, London School of Economics)

The Sentimental Life of International Law

Literature, Language, and Longing in World Politics

Gerry Simpson (Professor of International Law, Professor of International Law, London School of Economics)

$85.95

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Oxford University Press
03 February 2022

Political science & theory; Law & society; Public international law

The Sentimental Life of International Law is about our age-old longing for a decent international society and the ways of seeing, being, and speaking that might help us achieve that aim. This book asks how international lawyers might engage in a professional practice that has become, to adapt a title of Janet Malcolm's, both difficult and impossible. It suggests that international lawyers are disabled by the governing idioms of international lawyering, and proposes that they may be re-enabled by speaking different sorts of international law, or by speaking international law in different sorts of ways.

In this methodologically diverse and unusually personal account, Gerry Simpson brings to the surface international law's hidden literary prose and offers a critical and redemptive account of the field. He does so in a series of chapters on international law's bathetic underpinnings, its friendly relations, the neurotic foundations of its underlying social order, its screened-off comic dispositions, its anti-method, and the life-worlds of its practitioners. Finally, the book closes with a chapter in which international law is re-envisioned through the practice of gardening. All of this is put forward as a contribution to the project of making international law, again, a compelling language for our times.

By: Gerry Simpson (Professor of International Law Professor of International Law London School of Economics)
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 240mm, Width: 164mm, Spine: 17mm
Weight: 494g
ISBN: 9780192849793
ISBN 10: 0192849794
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 03 February 2022
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

"1: A plea for new international laws 2: The sentimental lives of international lawyers 3: International law's comic disposition 4: ""Bluebeard on trial"": the experience of bathos 5: An uncertain style: after method in international legal history 6: A declaration on friendly relations 7: Gardening, instead, or, of pastoral international law Postlude: last thoughts on sentimentality"

Gerry Simpson is a Professor of International Law at LSE. He previously held the Sir Kenneth Bailey Chair of Law at Melbourne Law School and studied law at the University of Aberdeen, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). He is the author of Great Powers and Outlaw States (Cambridge, 2004) (awarded the American Society of International Law's annual prize, and translated into several languages) and Law, War and Crime: War Crimes Trials and the Reinvention of International Law (Polity, 2008). Gerry is currently co-directing a project on the Cold War (with Matt Craven and Sundhya Pahuja) and writing a meditation on nuclearism entitled The Atomics: Life, Love and Death at the End of the World.

Reviews for The Sentimental Life of International Law: Literature, Language, and Longing in World Politics

a formidable reassessment of the very elements, often unspoken, that compose the distinct character of international law and lawyers and how we relate to international legal life. * Andre Nunes Chaib, International Law Agendas * More importantly, Gerry Simpson invites us to think it is worth engaging in alternative modes of tackling pressing global issues. That for all the epic but deceitful accounts advanced by the governing orthodoxies, there is still some space for sentimental, blasphemous ways of reflecting on our identity and building a new vision where sentiment without illusion helps redeem international law. * Julian Huertas, International Law Agendas * Simpson's homonymous article helped open the discipline's doors to inquiries into international law's 'personal life' as not only a scientific, but sentimental enterprise. The book has not disappointed in expanding this insight * LUIZA LEÃO SOARES PEREIRA, International Law Agendas *