International legal methods: Working for a tragic and cynical routine
Abstract
This chapter evaluates the routines at work in international legal discourses. It is premised on the idea that international legal discourses function as a deeply entrenched routine composed of a great variety of professional habits. From this perspective, writing about international law can be construed as an activity saturated with professional habits. This chapter grapples with one of these shared habits constitutive of the routine of international lawyers, namely what international lawyers refer to as ‘methods’. Methods, it is argued, are among the most central of all the habits constitutive of the routine of international lawyers, in that methods help the routine to conceal what it does. More specifically, this chapter claims that the methods deployed by international lawyers enshroud international legal discourses with both novelty and vulnerability, thereby camouflaging the tragedy and cynicism of the routine of international lawyers. It concludes by providing a counter-routine methodology that enables creative action and reinvention.