Non-Legality in International Law
Fleur Johns
Cambridge University Press
International lawyers typically start with the legal. What <br>is a legal as opposed to a political question? How should <br>international law adapt to the unforeseen? These are the routes <br>by which international lawyers typically reason. This book <br>begins, instead, with the non-legal. In a series of case studies, <br>Fleur Johns examines what international lawyers cast outside <br>or against law – as extra-legal, illegal, pre-legal or otherwise <br>non-legal – and how this comes to shape political possibility. <br>Non-legality is not merely the remainder of regulatory <br>action. It is a key structuring device of contemporary global <br>order. Constructions of non-legality are pivotal to debate in <br>areas ranging from torture to foreign investment, and from <br>climate change to natural disaster relief. Understandings <br>of non-legality inform what international lawyers today do <br>and what they refrain from doing. Tracing and potentially <br>reimagining the non-legal in international legal work is, <br>accordingly, both vital and pressing.