Legitimation through international law and legitimation of international law

Project management: Prof. Dr. Stefan Kadelbach and Prof. Dr. Jens Steffek

The emergence of new intergovernmental and supranational entities has led to a strong juridification of international relations. The legitimization of these governance structures often comes into conflict with state orders. Their claim to precedence over the diplomatic or power-political calculations of individual states goes hand in hand with positive norm-setting, which is legitimized by reference to international law. The project explains legitimation narratives in international law and human rights discourse in relation to their concrete empirical application and thus contributes insights into the plurality of their justificatory contexts to the field of research.

The research project examined narratives of justification in international law that are characterized by a confrontation between positive and natural law approaches. On the one hand, their normative binding force was worked out in the project in terms of the history of ideas on the basis of the emergence of the modern discourse on international law. On the other hand, the empirical application of supranational standards of justice such as human rights was examined using the current discourse in post-revolutionary Egypt and Tunisia.

The philosophical-historical reappraisal was prepared by a conference held in Frankfurt in 2014, on the basis of which contributions on state, legal and legitimizing contexts of the modern international legal order were produced by autumn 2015. A focused and intensive discussion of the most important results took place in May 2015 during a second conference phase at Villa Vigoni in Italy. The articles were published in the anthology System, Order, and International Law: The Early History of International Legal Thought from Machiavelli to Hegel (2017), published by Oxford University Press.

Narratives of the emergence of international legal theory are all too often projections of later eras that owe themselves to specific lines of reception. On the other hand, a strictly historical-contextualist approach is hardly possible. For interdisciplinary research, a reflected, moderate anachronism is recommended, which recognizes the time-bound nature of the theory, but does not succumb to the temptation to place everything under the suspicion of (proto-)colonialism and Eurocentrism, but rather uses its potential for a constructive(istic) reception. In this way, the significance of global concepts of order, which emerged in a special discursive sphere (international legal thought) and form the origins of today’s approaches to the legitimization of international law, can be better understood.

Field research by Ms. El Ouerghemmi on the role of international legal norms in the political processing of crimes committed by authoritarian regimes in Egypt and Tunisia provided many empirical findings. She examined the tense relationship between the domestic political handling of court proceedings to punish perpetrators and the external expectations of this process of coming to terms with the past. In Tunisia, an understanding of coming to terms with the past has prevailed that often fulfills external expectations, but takes little account of the demands of the victims at crucial points. In Egypt, on the other hand, there has been a strong politicization of dealing with the past, which undermines the legitimacy of any efforts.

The most important publications in the research project:

*Steffek, Jens and Leonie Holthaus: “The Social-democratic Roots of Global Governance: Welfare Internationalism from the 19th Century to the United Nations”, in: European Journal of International Relations, 2017

*Kadelbach, Stefan/Thomas Kleinlein/David Roth-Isigkeit (eds.): System, Order, and International Law: The Early History of International Legal Thought, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Kadelbach, Stefan: “Konstitutionalisierung und Rechtspluralismus – Über die Konkurrenz zweier Ordnungsentwürfe”, in: J. Bung and A. Engländer (eds.): Souveränität, Transstaatlichkeit und Weltverfassung – Tagung der Internationalen Vereinigung für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie (IVR) im September 2014 in Passau, Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie, Beiheft 153, 2017, pp. 97-108.

*Steffek, Jens: “The Output Legitimacy of International Organizations and the Global Public Interest”, in: International Theory 7(2), 2015, pp. 263-293.

people in this project:

Project management / contact person

Kadelbach, Stefan, Prof. Dr.

Steffek, Jens, Prof. Dr.

Project staff

El Ouerghemmi, Nadia

Holthaus, Leonie

Roth-Isigkeit, David, Dr.

Urun, Dogan