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International audience; This volume offers a series of short and highly self-reflective essays by leading international lawyers on the relation between international law and crises. It particularly shows that international law shapes the crises that it addresses as much as it is shaped by them. It critically evaluates the modes of intervention of international law in the problems of the world. Together these essays provide a unique stocktaking about the role, limits, and potential of international law as well as the worlds that are imagined through international lawyers’ vocabularies.

If one of the functions of the law is to prescribe norms of acceptable behaviour to members of a political community, then law’s effectiveness is part of the very idea of law itself, and it is for this reason that the concept of effectiveness operates within a legal order as a technique to adapt law to changing circumstances and, thus, to maintain its relevance to the society which it purports to regulate. Invoking effectiveness serves as an argument that both establishes legal authority and demands legal validation. There is a relative indistinction within the concept that suggests the alignment of the law with reality but also seems to suggest a particular form of alignment – one that entails the legal validation of reality, the coconstitutive dimension of which is perhaps the most striking. In this chapter, I put forward the argument that effectiveness plays a dual role: it exists as a notion to ensure, by its observance, that certain desired results may be achieved, and more prescriptively as a notion which assures, by its very existence, that those same desired results can be achieved. Within legal scholarship, then, effectiveness has historically operated as a sort of bridge between normativity (law) and reality (facts) within international law, serving to sustain the relation between the two.

International audience; Addressing some of the most perilous, controversial issues in international law and governance, this volume brings together legal scholars from diverse geographic, personal and scholarly perspectives. They reflect on the pervasive feeling of crisis in the world today and share their views on the possibilities and limits of the international legal architecture and its expert communities in shaping the world of tomorrow. What exactly is this feeling that the contemporary international legal architecture is at a tipping point? What do these possible risks expose about the fragility and limits of our current conceptual and institutional order? What commitments drive our hopes and anxieties? Authors explore these questions across a wide range of possible tipping points and offer readers a unique snapshot of the lived experience of what it means to be an expert engaged right now in international law and governance. Each chapter covers both theory and practice in analysing a current problem.

Along with treaties, custom is one of the sources of international law. It is known to consist of two elements: state practice and opinio juris. While many studies have looked at traditional questions of how to identify customary law, this book takes a new and original approach. It looks instead at the structure of thought that lies beneath the arguments about customary international law. By examining these structures, the book uncovers surprising conclusions, and demonstrates what the author describes as the 'discursive splendour' of customary international law. The book guides the reader through an analysis of eight distinct performances at work in the discourse on customary international law. One of its key claims is that customary international law is not the surviving trace of an ancient law-making mechanism that used to be found in traditional societies. Indeed, as is shown throughout, customary international law is anything but ancient, and there is hardly any doctrine of international law that contains so many of the features of modern thinking. It is also argued that, contrary to mainstream opinion, customary international law is in fact shaped by texts, and originates from a textual environment. This book provides an engaging account of customary international law, whilst challenging readers to rethink their understanding of this fundamental part of the discipline.

This chapter depicts the discursive splendour of customary international law, which is portrayed as a splendid mechanism by virtue of the sophisticated discursive performances it enables and demands. It introduces the success and plausibility of any argument about customary international law in international legal thought and practice that commonly hinge on a myriad of discursive performances. It also sheds light on the discursive splendour of a legal doctrine that is too often perceived as miserably simple, plain, or malfunctioning doctrine. The chapter provides an overview of the discursive performances of customary international law, which are construed as responses to the formal requirement of ascertaining the constitutive elements of customary international law. It elaborates how the customary international law provides international law with a law-creative process that is not dependent of the adoption of a formal written instrument.

This chapter zeroes in on the postulation of a moment in the past where the social reality actually engendered the norm as the discursive performance that is required for customary international law to be grounded in social reality. It discusses the grounding of customary international law in a social reality captured through practice and opinio juris that can only be upheld if there was a moment in the past where the practice and opinio juris of states have coalesced in a way that generates customary international law. It also argues that the actual moment where social reality has engendered a customary norm is never established or traced but is always presupposed. The chapter points out that the moment customary international law is made is located neither in time nor in space. It elaborates how customary international law is presupposed to have been made through actors' behaviours at some given point in the past and in a given place.

This chapter analyzes another common discursive performance witnessed in relation to customary international law that consists of the bestowing of a system-support function upon customary international law. It describes the various facets of discursive performance and particular ways in which customary international law is construed as playing a system-buttressing function. It also mentions how customary international law provides a guarantee for a minimum content for international. The chapter discusses the possibility for customary international law to be the formal nest of all the fundamental doctrines of international law and reviews the closure of international law through self-explanation. It cites customary international law as a system-support function that is informed by the presupposition that customary international law guarantees that there will always be some international legal rules of sort.

This chapter reviews the discourse on customary international law that is splendid thanks to the myriad of discursive performances that are achieved each time a claim is made about customary international law. It analyzes the anatomic account of the discourse on customary international law that contributed to an image of customary international law as a sophisticated doctrine whereby its users perform all kinds of discursive feats. It also demonstrates that textuality does not have the monopoly on discursive splendour in international law. The chapter argues that textuality is everywhere in customary international law notwithstanding as it is commonly understood as a source of unwritten law. It emphasizes that the discursive splendour of customary international law is neither a-textual nor pre-textual but rooted in the very textual materializations of customary international law.

This chapter focuses on the norm-creating character of the standard whose customary status is tested as another possible constitutive element of customary international law. It examines the third constitutive element of customary international law, which is the common recognition by international law of the enormous definitional powers to the International Court of Justice when it comes to the custom-identification criteria. It also explores the discursive performance that consists of the constant turning of a blind eye to a specific claim made by the Court in the 1969 North Sea Continental Shelve. The chapter highlights the 1969 North Sea Continental Shelf wherein the Court confirmed the dualistic approach and the consciousness of having a duty may be in order to offer an articulate definition of opinio juris for the first time. It argues that the requirement that the standard whose customary status is tested must be norm-creating as it was prescribed by the Court in the North Sea Continental Shelfcase.

This book argues that it does not suffice to simply invoke and demonstrate the two constitutive elements of customary international law, practice and opinion juris, to successfully and plausibly make a claim under the doctrine of customary international law. Behind what may look like a very crude dualist type of legal reasoning, a fine variety of discursive constructions are at work. By unpacking these discursive constructions, the book depicts the discursive splendour of customary international law. It reviews eight discursive performances at work in the discourse on customary international law and makes a number of original and provocative claims about this aspect of law. For example, the book claims that customary international law is not the surviving trace of an ancient law-making mechanism that used to be found in traditional societies. Indeed, as is shown throughout, the splendour of customary international law is everything but ancient. In fact, there is hardly any doctrine of international law that contains so many of the features of modern thinking. The book also puts forward the idea that all discursive performances of customary international law are shaped by texts, are articulated around texts, echo and continue pre-existing texts, unfold in a textual space, or, more simply, originate in a text-constituted environment.

This chapter talks about the move into self-confirmation as one of the most central discursive performances witnessed in arguments about customary international law. It explains that self-confirmation refers to the fact that testing the customary character of a rule entails an identity-check whereby the 'outside' world is interrogated according to a predetermined standard. It also mentions ascertaining practice and opinio juris amounts to a process of verifying a pre-existing representation of practice and opinio juris that is postulated by the rule whose customary status is being tested, demonstrated, or contested. The chapter considers self-confirmation as a common feature of modern thinking. It elaborates on the concrete implications of the self-confirmation at the heart of any argument about the customary status of international legal rules.

This chapter recounts the rise, consolidation, and fluctuation of the enabling constraint of the discourse on customary international law. It sets the stage for the discussion of the discursive performances that enabling constraint has prompted in international legal thought and practice. It also talks about the distinction between the two elements of customary international law: practice and opinio juris, which corresponds to a form of dualist thinking that came to thrive with modernity. The chapter describes dualist thinking about customary international law as a constraint that was formalized in the middle of the 20th century and that does not necessarily correspond to any ancient mode of thinking about customary international law. It shows that the dualist approach to the identification of customary international law has undergone a few variations over the last hundred years but uncontested in international legal thought and practice.

This chapter considers the constant deference to the idea of rule as the most ordinary discursive performance witnessed in the discourse on customary international law. It examines how the idea of rule dominates most arguments about customary international law, be them pertaining to the identification of customary international law or to the law that has been identified as having a customary status. It also cites the custom-formative process and the product of that process that are understood in terms of rules in international legal thought and practice. The chapter describes customary international law as a rule-governed rule-making process wherein there are rules on the identification of customary international law as well as rules of customary international law. It formulates some observations on the pull of the ruleness witnessed in the discourse on customary international law.

This chapter explores customary international law that is constantly approached as the residual receptacle for international legal obligations that cannot be grounded in treaty law. It highlights the discursive performance that presupposes a sort of fetishization of the treaty as the first go-to source of international law as well as the idea that customary international law is second-best. It also cites the discursive performance that led some observers to claim that customary international law has become the generic category for practically all binding non-treaty standards. The chapter draws on international human rights law and international criminal law and highlights the discursive performance that is witnessed by customary international law. It formulates some observations on the consequences for general principles of law of the common understanding of customary international law as a residual receptacle for non-treaty international legal obligations.

This chapter reviews the dominant approach in which customary international law gets in validity, its legality, its consistency, and its factuality from practice and opinio juris. It investigates the presumptive character of the moment where practice and opinio juris coalesce and generate customary international law, which must be ascribed a genitor. It also emphasizes that as long as practice and opinio juris have a sufficient number of genitors, they can be conducive to the formation of customary international law. The chapter talks about practicians as the genitors of the practice which customary international law must emanate from, such as those that produce the actual behaviours (practice sensu stricto) and the beliefs (opinio juris) that are generative of customary international law. It outlines the determination of the practicians of customary international law as a discursive performance that is commonly and repeatedly witnessed in debates about customary international law.

This chapter claims that international legal thought and practice are replete with self-destructive claims about customary international law. It discusses the discursive performance that mirrors a very common feature of modern thinking and commonly nurtured rejuvenation through self-defeat, highlighting international legal thought and practice that contain plenty of manifestations of discursive self destruction. It also mentions the discursive performance found in the discourse on customary international law. The chapter reviews the multiple materializations of the self-destructive moves in the discourse on customary international law. It shows that a discursive performance constitutes a mode of administering the doctrine of customary international law and that the repeated findings of malfunctioning of customary international law carry elaborate and fine representations.

International audience; Inspiring and distinctive, After Meaning provides a radical challenge to the way in which international law is thought and practised. Jean d’Aspremont asserts that the words and texts of international law, as forms, never carry or deliver meaning but, instead, perpetually defer meaning and ensure it is nowhere found within international legal discourse.

This volume offers new practical and theoretical perspectives on one of the most complex questions regarding the formation of international law, namely that actors other than states contribute to the making of customary international law. Notwithstanding the International Law Commission's valuable contribution, the making of customary international law remains riddled with acute practical and theoretical controversies that continue to be intensively debated. Making extensive reference to the case-law of international law courts and tribunals, as well as the most recent scholarly work on customary international law, this volume provides a comprehensive study of the contribution of international organisations and non-state actors to the formation of customary international law. With innovative tools and guidance for law students, legal scholars, and researchers in law, as well as legal practitioners, advisers, judges, arbitrators, and counsels, this collection is essential reading for those wishing to understand and address contemporary questions of international law-making.

This chapter reflects on the last decade of scholarly reflections on the question of non-State actors and customary international law and revisits some of the specific argumentative constructions and presuppositions that have informed – and continue to inform – discourses on the contribution of non-State actors to the formationof customary international law. It is argued here that three tropes have been mechanically repeated in previous rounds of scholarly debates on non-State actors and customary law. These constructions can be summarised as follows: the idea that the two-element variant of the doctrine of customary international law originates in article 38 of the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice; the continuous attachment of international lawyers – including the International Law Commission – to the distinction between practice and opinio juris; the understanding of the concept of non-State actors as a plain and innocent descriptive category.

This volume offers new practical and theoretical perspectives on one of the most complex questions regarding the formation of international law, namely that actors other than states contribute to the making of customary international law.Notwithstanding the International Law Commission's valuable contribution, the making of customary international law remains riddled with acute practical and theoretical controversies that continue to be intensively debated. Making extensive reference to the case-law of international law courts and tribunals, as well as the most recent scholarly work on customary international law, this volume provides a comprehensive study of the contribution of international organisations and non-state actors to the formation of customary international law. With innovative tools and guidance for law students, legal scholars, and researchers in law, as well as legal practitioners, advisers, judges, arbitrators, and counsels, this collection is essential reading for those wishing to understand and address contemporary questions of international law-making.

This chapter has two primary aims. First, it sketches out the existing theorizations about treaties, elaborating the various dualist modes of thinking currently dominating international legal thought and practice. Second, it seeks to supplement current theorizations with some new perspectives. Specifically, it identifies three overlooked uses of the idea of the treaty in contemporary legal thought and practice that may further current theorizations about treaties. In particular, the second part shows the extent to which the idea of the treaty allows (i) the creation of conceptual anachronisms in the making of historical narratives about international law, (ii) the simplification of the processes of its interpretation, and (iii) the construction of a magic descendance that shield those invoking the treaty from any responsibility for anything that is made in the name of the treaty.

Jean d’Aspremont analyses how the Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros Judgment used the International Law Commission’s (ilc) work on international responsibility – and, in turn, the Judgment’s impact on the Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (arsiwa) – in order to discuss the ‘symbiotic relationship’ between the icj and the ilc in the construction of general rules of international law.

This essay argues that international legal discourses, including in the interpretations ofinternational law that populate them, function as a deeply entrenched routinecomposed of a great variety of professional habits. This essay grapples with one ofthese shared habits constitutive of the routine of international lawyers, namely whatinternational lawyers refer to as ‘methods’. Methods, it is argued here, are among themost central of all the habits constitutive of the routine of international lawyers, in thatmethods help the routine to conceal what it does. More specifically, this essay claimsthat the methods deployed by international lawyers enshroud international legaldiscourses with both novelty and vulnerability, thereby camouflaging the tragedy andcynicism of the routine of international lawyers. The essay ends with a few remarks onwhat a counter-routine methodology could look like.

This chapter examines international courts and arbitral tribunals as bureaucratic bodies controlling the social reality created by the definitional categories of international law. In performing their wide variety of functions, international courts and arbitral tribunals not only make use of the social reality created by international law but also exert control over it. This control over the social reality created by the definitional categories of international law is approached as a form of control over knowledge and, it is argued, constitutes a feature of bureaucratic processes. In contending that international courts and arbitral tribunals control knowledge in this way, the chapter projects an image of international dispute resolution processes as bureaucratic sites of the exercise of power. The chapter then identifies the type of knowledge that falls within the ambit of the control of international courts and arbitral tribunals, as well as the modes of control they use to control knowledge.

Présentation de l'éditeur : "The essays populating these two volumes provide a comprehensive account of existing scholarly debates on the history and theory of international law. This authoritative collection, with contributions by leading academics, covers a wide range of important topics such as primitive legal scholarship, medieval law and the Grotian Tradition. With subtopics including the markers, heroes and making of international law, and an original introduction by the editor, this extensive collection will appeal to a wide variety of researchers in the field of legal history and theory, as well as students and scholars alike."

International investment law has been weathering contestation since its inception. It suffices to recall the opposition of capital-importing States to the idea of an international minimum standard expressed in the famous Calvo Doctrine which rejected the standards of compensations for expropriation. Contestation also flared with the rejection of an obligation to provide compensation for the expropriation of foreigners that accompanied the Declaration on the Establishment of the New International Economic Order (NIEO).

Epistemic community is a descriptive and analytical category used in social sciences as a whole to denote a group of technicians or professionals sharing common constructed sensibilities. The concept has proved very popular across disciplines and has been constantly transposed across fields. As a result, it has not been univocally understood and its contours have continuously taken the particular shapes of the discipline to which it has been transposed.

Epistemic community is a descriptive and analytical category used in social sciences as a whole to denote a group of technicians or professionals sharing common constructed sensibilities. The concept has proved very popular across disciplines and has been constantly transposed across fields. As a result, it has not been univocally understood and its contours have continuously taken the particular shapes of the discipline to which it has been transposed.

International audience; The question of the sources of international law inevitably raises some well-known scholarly controversies: where do the rules of international law come from? Through which processes are they made? How are they ascertained? Where does the international legal order begin and end? These traditional questions bear on at least two different levels of understanding. First, how are international norms validated as rules of international \textquoteleftlaw\textquoteright, i.e. legally binding norms? This is the static question of the pedigree of international legal rules and the boundaries of the international legal order. Secondly, what are the processes through which these rules are made? This is the dynamic question of the making of these rules and of the exercise of public authority in international law. This book explores the various facets of the sources of international law. It provides a systematic overview of the key issues and debates around the sources of international law, including recent contestations thereof. It also offers an authoritative theoretical guide for anyone studying or working within but also outside international law wishing to understand one of its most fundamental questions.

This book questions the critical attitude that is informing the critical histories that have been flourishing since the ‘historical turn’ in international law. It makes the argument that the ‘historical turn’ falls short of being radically critical as the abounding critical histories which have come to populate the international literature over the last decades continue to be orchestrated along the very lines set by the linear historical narratives which they seek to question and disrupt, thereby repressing the imagination of international lawyers. It makes the point that the critical histories that have accompanied the ‘historical turn’ have contributed to the repression of disciplinary imagination just like other linear disciplinary histories. This book argues that the critical histories must move beyond a mere historiographical attitude and promotes radical historical critique in order to unbridle disciplinary imagination. [Publisher]

This is yet another case where the US Supreme Court was called upon to determine the reach of a federal statute. It held, on the one hand, that ‘the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act’ (RICO) could be applied to conduct that occurs outside the United States. According to the Court, Congress intended certain provisions of RICO, such as §§1962 (b) and (c), to apply extraterritorially. This was significant, as it involved the rebuttal of the presumption against extraterritoriality in respect of those provisions. On the other hand, it also ruled that §1964(c), which provides for a private action, must prove an injury within the United States. It was, therefore, a bitter-sweet victory for the claimant, the European Community, who had brought a claim under §1964(c). As it alleged only foreign injuries, it failed to meet the test under this provision. The European Community and 26 of its Member States brought an action against RJR Nabisco and its related entities (‘Nabisco’), alleging that Nabisco participated in a global money laundering scheme in association with various organised crime groups, which violated RICO. This Act prohibits certain activities of organised crime groups, including the investing income derived from racketeering activities in an enterprise involved in interstate and foreign commerce; acquiring or maintaining an interest in an enterprise, and conducting affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity; and conspiring to violate any of these prohibitions.

In the past decades of international legal thought, the defining role of bindingness has increasingly been approached with scepticism. It is less and less construed as the exclusive genetic code that provides the instructions for the identification and autonomous development of international legal discourses as international lawyers have sought to emancipate themselves from their own genetic heritage. Since the second half of the twentieth century, many international lawyers have come to feel that international legal discourses ought no longer to be structured and developed around the dichotomy between the ‘legally binding’ and the ‘legally nonbinding’. Their emancipatory moves have arguably brought about refreshing dynamism and excitement in international legal thought. And yet, as this chapter argues, bindingness has proved resilient. After recalling the modern understandings and ontological functions of bindingness in international legal discourses, a few observations are formulated on the emancipatory experiments found in recent international legal thought. The chapter ends with some remarks on the resilience of the idea of bindingness as a result of the anxiety and suspicion that has accompanied attempts to alter the genetic code of the discipline.

In the past decades of international legal thought, the defining role of bindingness has increasingly been approached with scepticism. It is less and less construed as the exclusive genetic code that provides the instructions for the identification and autonomous development of international legal discourses as international lawyers have sought to emancipate themselves from their own genetic heritage. Since the second half of the twentieth century, many international lawyers have come to feel that international legal discourses ought no longer to be structured and developed around the dichotomy between the ‘legally binding’ and the ‘legally nonbinding’. Their emancipatory moves have arguably brought about refreshing dynamism and excitement in international legal thought. And yet, as this chapter argues, bindingness has proved resilient. After recalling the modern understandings and ontological functions of bindingness in international legal discourses, a few observations are formulated on the emancipatory experiments found in recent international legal thought. The chapter ends with some remarks on the resilience of the idea of bindingness as a result of the anxiety and suspicion that has accompanied attempts to alter the genetic code of the discipline.

In the past decades of international legal thought, the defining role of bindingness has increasingly been approached with scepticism. It is less and less construed as the exclusive genetic code that provides the instructions for the identification and autonomous development of international legal discourses as international lawyers have sought to emancipate themselves from their own genetic heritage. Since the second half of the twentieth century, many international lawyers have come to feel that international legal discourses ought no longer to be structured and developed around the dichotomy between the ‘legally binding’ and the ‘legally nonbinding’. Their emancipatory moves have arguably brought about refreshing dynamism and excitement in international legal thought. And yet, as this chapter argues, bindingness has proved resilient. After recalling the modern understandings and ontological functions of bindingness in international legal discourses, a few observations are formulated on the emancipatory experiments found in recent international legal thought. The chapter ends with some remarks on the resilience of the idea of bindingness as a result of the anxiety and suspicion that has accompanied attempts to alter the genetic code of the discipline.

In the past decades of international legal thought, the defining role of bindingness has increasingly been approached with scepticism. It is less and less construed as the exclusive genetic code that provides the instructions for the identification and autonomous development of international legal discourses as international lawyers have sought to emancipate themselves from their own genetic heritage. Since the second half of the twentieth century, many international lawyers have come to feel that international legal discourses ought no longer to be structured and developed around the dichotomy between the ‘legally binding’ and the ‘legally nonbinding’. Their emancipatory moves have arguably brought about refreshing dynamism and excitement in international legal thought. And yet, as this chapter argues, bindingness has proved resilient. After recalling the modern understandings and ontological functions of bindingness in international legal discourses, a few observations are formulated on the emancipatory experiments found in recent international legal thought. The chapter ends with some remarks on the resilience of the idea of bindingness as a result of the anxiety and suspicion that has accompanied attempts to alter the genetic code of the discipline.

This article seeks to lay bare some of the main conceptual, theoretical, and normative constructions that have informed the rise of the doctrine of statehood into one of the fundamental doctrines of international law and allowed it to continue to prove most influential in contemporary international legal discourses. In doing so, this article will make the point that the doctrine of statehood has been shaped by both modern and post-colonial heritages. It will be shown that the main components of the doctrine of statehood are very modern in that they are directly inherited from liberal legal thought. It will simultaneously be demonstrated that it is only in the second half of the twentieth century, and more precisely in the wake of the start of the decolonisation process, that all these modern components were assembled and organised in order to compose what is known today as the doctrine of statehood.

Présentation de l'éditeur : "Concepts allow us to know, understand, think, do and change international law. This book, with sixty chapters by leading scholars, provides a nuanced guide to those concepts of historical significance for international law, as well as those that have become central to how we think about the discipline. In select cases this book also offers some new concepts, seeking to address familiar concerns that have not been fully articulated within the discipline. This unique book is the first expansive exploration of concepts that have become historically central to the discipline. It allows us to appreciate how order, struggle and change play out in international law and legal thought, and how these concerns of power implicate ethical considerations. Embracing a wide range of historical and theoretical approaches, this book hopes to ignite a renewed, fertile engagement between our concepts and the contemporary, precarious, conditions of international legal life. Thought-provoking, original and engaging, this book is essential reading for researchers, postgraduates and doctoral students in international law, legal history and legal theory. Academics in international relations, history, sociology and political thought will also find this an essential read."

Présentation de l'éditeur : "Concepts allow us to know, understand, think, do and change international law. This book, with sixty chapters by leading scholars, provides a nuanced guide to those concepts of historical significance for international law, as well as those that have become central to how we think about the discipline. In select cases this book also offers some new concepts, seeking to address familiar concerns that have not been fully articulated within the discipline. This unique book is the first expansive exploration of concepts that have become historically central to the discipline. It allows us to appreciate how order, struggle and change play out in international law and legal thought, and how these concerns of power implicate ethical considerations. Embracing a wide range of historical and theoretical approaches, this book hopes to ignite a renewed, fertile engagement between our concepts and the contemporary, precarious, conditions of international legal life. Thought-provoking, original and engaging, this book is essential reading for researchers, postgraduates and doctoral students in international law, legal history and legal theory. Academics in international relations, history, sociology and political thought will also find this an essential read."

Using data drawn from the catalogues of the main publishers of international law books, this short essay focuses on the imagery used in the design of international law books and the way it contributes to the aesthetics of international legal argumentation. This essay zeroes in on the paintings that are reproduced on the cover of international law books with a view to unravelling some of the dynamics of the aesthetics of international legal argumentation. It argues that the greatest driver in the choice for the imagery of a book cover is the game which the author wants to play with the reader. It is argued that authors commonly use the cover page of their international law books, not only to illustrate their work but, more fundamentally, to attract readers into a game where the readers themselves create an explanatory narrative around the book.