What does the dean of a law faculty do? I asked myself this question throughout my academic career. Most of the time, they appear both indispensable and irrelevant in equal measure. Deans are quixotic, sometimes even hostile. They do not teach; they produce little research; and many law faculties are acrimonious places, suggesting that organisational leadership is not within their...
Formalism in the teaching of international law is burning out. This is not surprising. Its application always seemed impractical, suffering from the theory’s glaring defects as well as unique flaws when administered to international law. Treaty interpretation and state practice, for example, the two most suitable facets for formalist analysis, proved deficient in producing the conclusive-qua-correct outcomes that formalists fetishize....
Ideas about global capitalism have been in constant flux since the beginning of the twentieth century. In the early 1900s, imperialist theorists such as Hobson and Hilferding argued that inter-state rivalries would bring down the castle; WWI and WWII seemed poised to do just that. Fast-forward to the 1950s and not only did this not happen but the castle was...