The Routines of International Law
Résumé
This essay argues that international legal discourses, including in the interpretations ofinternational law that populate them, function as a deeply entrenched routinecomposed of a great variety of professional habits. This essay grapples with one ofthese shared habits constitutive of the routine of international lawyers, namely whatinternational lawyers refer to as ‘methods’. Methods, it is argued here, are among themost central of all the habits constitutive of the routine of international lawyers, in thatmethods help the routine to conceal what it does. More specifically, this essay claimsthat the methods deployed by international lawyers enshroud international legaldiscourses with both novelty and vulnerability, thereby camouflaging the tragedy andcynicism of the routine of international lawyers. The essay ends with a few remarks onwhat a counter-routine methodology could look like.