The Politics of International Law by Christian Reus-Smit - 9780521837668

The Politics of International LawAuthor(s): Christian Reus-Smit\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521837668, 978-0521837668\nSynopsis\nPolitics and law appear deeply entwined in contemporary international relations. Yet existing perspectives struggle to understand the complex interplay between these aspects of international life. In this path-breaking volume, a group of leading international relations scholars and legal theorists advance a new constructivist perspective on the politics of international law. They reconceive politics as a field of human action that stands at the intersection of issues of identity, purpose, ethics, and strategy, and define law as an historically contingent institutional expression of such politics. They explain how liberal politics has conditioned modern international law and how law 'feeds back' to constitute international relations and world politics. This new pe.