The Lives and Times of International Law
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Cite JOURNAL ARTICLE
Style
Format
The Lives and Times of International Law
Chan Yoon Onn, Kenneth | Kleinlein, Thomas
German Yearbook of International Law, Online First : pp. 1–26
Additional Information
Article Details
Author Details
Dr. Kenneth Chan Yoon Onn, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Faculty of Law, Walther Schücking Institute for International Law Westring 400 24118 Kiel, Germany
- Dr. Kenneth Chan Yoon Onn (Research Associate, Walther Schücking Institute for International Law, University of Kiel) is the Managing Editor of the German Yearbook of International Law
- Search in Google Scholar
Prof. Dr. Thomas Kleinlein, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Faculty of Law, Walther Schücking Institute for International Law Westring 400 24118 Kiel, Germany
- Thomas Kleinlein is Director of the Walther Schücking Institute for International Law and a member of the Faculty of Law of Kiel University.
- ORCID profile
- Search in Google Scholar
Abstract
Abstract: What does time mean to international law and its acolytes? In this article, which opens the special focus section on ‘time and international law’, we seek to conceptualise our relationship to time as, on the one hand, an objective, linear narrative that both produces coherence and entrenches hegemony, and on the other, as a subjective, lived experience, in which time distorts and changes because so too do our memories and experience of it. This context is then grafted on to our perception of the interplay between the past, present, and future(s) of international law, revealing critical insights into how the profession and practice has grown and changed and reinvented itself. The article concludes by analysing the temporal structures and discourses envisioned and engaged by the contributions that subsequently make up this special section (ranging from cyclicality, layered structures, and the touchstone character of ‘events’, to spatiotemporality, performativity, and poly-sense). These pieces, it argues, introduce different visions of time’s complex architectures, which are framed as constructs through which certain aspects of international law as a discipline are revealed.