This work-in-progress article (from 2012) discusses various contributions to the theory of opinio iuris in international customary law. The tension between the two moments of subjective approval of the respective norm on the one hand and the obligatory force beyond the disposal of the obliged subject is found to be recurring throughout the history…[Read more]

This review discusses two recent publications – a critical edition of a primary source and a collection of essays – around the Theory of International Law of Alberico Gentili (1552–1608). On the one hand it examines Gentili’s interest in ancient Rome and how he used it as a paradigmatic case of imperial order. But on the other, it questio…[Read more]

Preface of a collection of essays on the political theory of Claude Lefort.

This is the introductory chapter to the monograph “Recht – Macht – Öffentlichkeit”, which investigates how to include the phenomenological dimension of the life-world in the analysis of the demoratic state. In Jürgen Habermas’s discourse theory of law and democracy there is reason for such an extension, yet it is hard to carry out metho…[Read more]

This chapter tries to shift the contrast of debates between ‘scholasticii’ and ‘politici’ away from conceptualizing it in terms of theology vs. rationalism, since in a way both share a modern, rationalist outlook: It is argued that the practice of politics is recognized by both Machiavelli and his scholastic counterpart Girolamo Savonarola as…[Read more]

This chapter discusses Francisco de Vitoria’s “republican” conception of law and politics, and the resulting connection between international law and a global legislative commonwealth.

In discussing the works of 16th-century theorists Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili, this article examines how two different conceptions of a global legal community affect the legal character of the international order and the obligatory force of international law. For Vitoria the legal bindingness of ius gentium necessarily presupposes an…[Read more]

This chapter discusses the history and relevance of the internet for processes of globalization.

This chapter discusses the quasi-juridical mode of argumentation that Francisco de Vitoria applies in his lecture on the Indians. Even though he emphasises his theological competence and starts from a biblical command (“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them …” Mt 28:19), the questions he then discusses concern specifically the…[Read more]

Taking his critique of totalitarianizing conceptions of community as a starting point, this text examines Jean-Luc Nancy’s work of an ‘ontology of plural singular being’ for its political implications. It argues that while at first this ontology seems to advocate a negative or an anti-politics only, it can also be read as a ‘theory of communi…[Read more]