International Law and Universality

This book takes an unflinching look at the roles and functions played by the idea of universality in international legal discourses, as well as the narratives of progress that often accompany it. In doing so, it provides a critical appraisal of the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion attendant to international law and its universalist discursive strategies. Universality is therefore not reduced to the question of the geographical outreach of international law but is instead understood in terms of boundaries. This entails examining how the idea of universality was developed in the dominant vernaculars of international law - primarily English and French - before being universalised and imposed upon international lawyers from all traditions. This analysis simultaneously offers an opportunity to revisit the ideologies that constitute the identity of international lawyers today, as well as the socialisation and legal educational processes that international lawyers undergo. With an emphasis on the binaries that arise from the invocation of the idea of universality in international legal discourses, this book sheds new light on the idea of universality as a fraught site of contestation in international legal discourses.

1 - Introduction
2 - The Spaces of the Universal and the Particular in International Law: Questioning Binaries and Uncovering Political Projects
3 - The Philosophical Problem of Universals and Universality Binaries in International Law: Hobbes and Leibniz Compared
4 - Universalising the Particular; or, Hotel and Carrier Bag
5 - International Legal Universalism: A Reactionary Ideology of Disciplinary Self-Aggrandizement
6 - The Assumption, Not Invention, of Universality Is the Problem
7 - L'Invention de l'Universalité du Droit International
8 - Universal Human Rights within Social Particulars
9 - Human Rights Nationalism as Universality Challenge
10 - Universalisms of Human Dominion
11 - The Universal Recognition of Animal Welfare and its Dark Sides
12 - Regionalism, Hegemony, and Universality in the International Order of the Far East
13 - Universality in International Law Beyond the European: An Islamic Law Perspective
14 - Beyond Co-option and Contestation: The Chinese Belt and Road Initiative and the Universality of International Law
15 - The Power of Images: Questioning the Universality of International Human Rights Law
16 - German 'Dogmatik' - An Untranslatable Concept if Ever There was One?
17 - The Retreat of the State in International Law? The Paris Agreement as a Case Study
18 - Oscillating Justice: Between Universal and Particular
19 - Conceptual Universality vs Pragmatic Particularity in International Adjudication

Isil Aral is an Assistant Professor of Public International Law at Koç University. Her research focuses on international legal theory, international organisations law and international human rights law. She received her LL.M. from the London School of Economics and Ph.D. from the University of Manchester. Her work has been published in the Journal on the Use of Force and International Law, Oxford Bibliographies in International Law and Oxford International Organizations (OXIO). Her monograph 'International Law as a Set of Narratives' will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2024. Jean d'Aspremont is a Professor of International Law at Sciences Po School of Law. He also holds a chair of Public International Law at the University of Manchester. He is General Editor of the Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law and Director of Oxford International Organizations (OXIO). He is a series editor of the Melland Schill Studies in International Law. On top of 10 research monographs and 10 edited books, he has published close to 180 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. Some of his articles and monographs have been translated in several languages including Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Japanese and Persian.