INTERNATIONAL LAW: CONSTITUTIONALISM, MANAGERIALISM AND THE ETHOS OF LEGAL EDUCATION

The judgment of the European Court of Justice in the Mox Plant case in 2006 is striking in its narrowness of vision. It imagines European law in fully autonomous terms, analogous to the national laws of European States under the strict "dualism" of late-19th century jurisprudence. But Mox Plant is only one example of the increasing fragmentation of law beyond the nation-State into more or less autonomous technical "boxes", each geared to realise a particular ethos, the structural bias of a particular form of expertise. Not only "European law" but also "trade law", "human rights law", "environmental law" are examples of such boxes, systems for the management of particular types of problem from a particular perspective. But law ought not to be conceived in managerial terms. It should not be reduced into an instrument of the preferences of those who manage this or that technical problem-area. Legal training - in the European University Institute and elsewhere - should be about the conditions and limits of particular forms of managerial authority. And if education in international law should be about how to attain a universal perspective, in today's conditions this means the development of a critical sensitivity to the forms of international power exercised though particular forms of technical expertise.