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Welche Rolle können die Geisteswissenschaften bei der Gestaltung unserer gemeinsamen Zukunft spielen? Von welchen Werten lassen wir uns im 21. Jahrhundert leiten? Wie können wir das Potenzial der Geisteswissenschaften in einer Zeit vielfältiger Krisen nutzen? Die Autor*innen stellen sich diesen grundlegenden Fragen und verorten die Antworten in einem neuen Verständnis von Geisteswissenschaften, die ihr Denken und ihre Vorstellungskraft an Kriterien einer lebenswerten Zukunft ausrichten. Diese Geisteswissenschaften stellen sich in den Dienst allen Lebens auf unserem Planeten und sind dadurch in der Lage, neu formulierte, verbindliche Werte in die Gesellschaft hineinzutragen und der Zerstörung unserer Umwelt entschlossen entgegenzutreten.

What role can the humanities play in shaping our common future? What are the values that guide us in the 21st century? How can we unleash the potential the humanities offer in a time of multiple crises? This volume tackles some of these fundamental questions, acknowledging and developing the changing role of academic discourse in a turbulent world. This timely book argues that the humanities engender conceptual tools that are capable of reconciling theory and practice. In a bold move, we call for the humanities to reach beyond the confines of universities and engage in the most urgent debates facing humanity today - in a multidisciplinary, transformative, and constructive way. This is a blueprint for how societal change can be inclusive and equitable for the good of humans and non-humans alike.

Assessments of the relationship between trade agreements and the climate regime often focus on the potential for normative conflict. Concerns that trade commitments may prevent the adoption of measures to curb climate change, or at least that these are two regimes that “point in different directions,”1 are often voiced to suggest that taking climate action requires fundamentally modifying, and maybe getting rid of, current trade agreements. In this essay, we argue that allegations of conflict disregard longstanding World Trade Organization (WTO) jurisprudence on policy-justified trade measures. As a matter of principle, this alleged conflict has been essentially overcome since the 1998 Appellate Body report in United States – Shrimp.2 Focusing on potential conflict distracts from the real challenges and dilemmas involved in designing and implementing a global carbon regime, including through the trade instruments known as carbon border adjustment mechanisms (CBAMs and so-called “climate clubs”), for which the legal parameters provided by trade agreements may be instrumental.

Why do actors use the language of international law in global politics? This chapter discusses answers to this question from the perspective of three different logics of action—consequentialism, appropriateness, and deference. It exposes how different explanations for the invocation of international law share assumptions about the law’s legitimacy effect, i.e., its impact on evaluative judgments about what is right and wrong. Typically: Do levels of approval decrease if a certain behavior is claimed to be illegal? This chapter discusses experimental studies that have inquired into the impact of invoking the law on public opinion, overall offering some support for the law’s legitimacy effect. But those studies are partially contradictory and require further refinement. The chapter argues that inquiries should pay closer regard to international law’s distinctive claim to authority, to the predispositions of non-US audiences, and to law’s function in enabling rather than constraining behavior. On this basis, the chapter makes suggestions for future experimental setups, closing with an outlook on the deep divides that have separated experimental methods from legal research of a more critical bent.

Drawing on my inaugural lecture, I argue that the spectre of inequality haunts international law. The presence of the spectre first of all draws attention to what is rotten in the global economic order: how the law of the global economy has contributed to high levels of inequality while, at the same time, abdicating responsibility for it. Second, like all spectres, international law’s spectre of inequality is animated by a spirit, the spirit of social justice. It points to forsaken paths, lost memories and conjures up past possibilities that were not realized. Third, the spectre endures unless we give in and break with current repetitions. It directs those in search of progressive change towards productive contradictions within global order. Those contradictions are indeed carriers of hope. They offer reason to believe that the future is open. Engaging with the spectre of inequality in international law turns out to be much less daunting than failing to do so.

These texts on the legitimacy of international courts were framed as a direct reaction to arguments put forward in the book “In Whose Name?” by Armin von Bogdandy und Ingo Venzke. The subjects ranged from a comparison between international organizations and international courts and how they can contribute to democratize international law to assessing the democratic legitimacy of international human rights courts. Therefore the collection is dealing with both theoretical and practical questions regarding the legitimacy of international courts and how such problems relate to fundamental problems of our times.

The present contribution reacts to concerns about the legitimacy of supra- and international public authority by introducing the idea of relative authority. It argues that public authority is relative, first, in the sense that the exercise of authority by one actor always stands in relation to others and, second, that the allocation of authority should be informed by the legitimacy assets that different actors can bring into the governance process. It develops an argument in favor of a specific, articulated allocation of public authority. Like other legal approaches to global governance it is inspired by domestic legal theory and thinking. It distinguishes itself through its focus on questions of institutional choice: Who should do what in European and international law? While ideas of the separation of power face an uphill battle in the variegated institutional settings on the European and even more so international level, the core normative program embedded in this idea provides traction. The contribution offers the idea of relative authority as a core part of an argumentative framework to critique and help justify the exercise of supra- and international public authority.

The article proposes to think counterfactually about international law. For example, what if the ICJ had decided South West Africa on the merits or had it not done so in Nicaragua? What if a different conception of the sources of international law had emerged in the drafting of the Statute of the PCIJ or during decolonization in the 1960s? Writing counterfactual (hi)stories of international law, the article submits, has the potential of, first, exposing the contingency of outcomes that is glossed over in the rush towards making sense of what actually happened. Second, it supports the understanding of what actually happened in a context-sensitive fashion that complements grand theories’ emphasis on systemic variables. Third, counterfactual thinking forms part of comparative assessments and exposes normative blind spots. Counterfactual thinking thus contributes to the freedom from necessity, from grand theory, and from reality. In short, by asking how it could be otherwise, counterfactual thinking questions the present shape of international law. Inspired by thriving practices of counterfactual thinking in history, social science and critical theory, the article develops a nuanced argument in favour of thinking counterfactually about international law. It draws the contours of what counterfactual thinking is about, discusses merits, offers guidance on how to do it, and provides at least one more detailed example — what if the International Trade Organization had been established around 1949?

Calls emerging from world public opinion for legitimate and effective international institutions require a paradigm shift in public international law. There is a part of public international law that should better be understood as "international public law", because it enables and disciplines the exercise of international public authority, i.e. the pursuit of public interests by international institutions. The paper unfolds our understanding of international public law by way of a thorough discussion of other approaches to governance phenomena in international legal scholarship, including private law approaches, critical approaches, International Institutional Law, Global Administrative Law, and Constitutionalism. It then carves out the notion of international public authority. This notion includes various types of soft and informal governance instruments with innovative compliance mechanisms, as well as the activities of informal and hybrid institutions or network-like structures.

The resurfacing interest in the New International Economic Order (NIEO) is mainly driven by the ambition of regaining a sense for past possibilities in order to question the present and to open up different futures. This ambition resonates with the core of critical thinking which pushes toward an appreciation of contingencies. What was possible? When approaching this question, however, historical inquiries must not overstate the possibilities of different action at the expense of determining structures. More specifically, they need to deal with the low degree of institutionalized politics on the international plane. And they need to counter a tendency toward excess nostalgia for that which was not. More than anything else, the history of the NIEO testifies to the great difficulties in turning claims about contingency into compelling narratives. Another way of approaching the NIEO, however, does not place actual possibilities at its centre, but unrealized potentials.

The article provides an assessment of the European Commission’s recent proposal for reform in investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) under the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). It does so on the basis of a public law theory of international adjudication that presents international courts and tribunals as multifunctional actors who exercise public authority and therefore require democratic legitimacy. The article introduces this understanding against the background of other, traditional basic conceptions of international courts and tribunals. It then focuses on the prospects of appellate review and politico-legislative input under the European Commission’s proposal for TTIP, as well as on the provisions pertaining to the arbitrators, the judicial process, and the judicial decisions. While the net merits of ISDS in the Trans-Atlantic context are uncertain, the article submits that the European Commission’s proposal provides, in principle, a welcome response to some of the more egregious shortcomings of investor-state arbitration.

The Leiden Journal of International Law (LJIL) is many things. In the present editorial we highlight three of its activities – both old and new. First, we look back briefly at the symposium on ‘The Changing Role of Scholarship in International Law’ that we held in March 2015. Second, we present the winner of the second LJIL Prize and draw attention to her contribution. Third, we announce the first LJIL lecture and introduce the inaugural laureate. We do this in a way that continues to reflect on the roles of the journal. We do not aspire to define its identity simply because we value its diversity too much. But we wish to contribute to the ongoing debates on how a journal of international law might position itself in light of many new outlets for scholarship, in the context of porous or battled disciplinary frontiers, and in response to expectations that scholarship ought to meet. These are recurrent issues in the journal and its editorials. In particular, Carsten Stahn has drawn attention to the theme that shaped the symposium, the changing role of scholarship. He has since stepped down as an Editor-in-Chief and Ingo Venzke has assumed this position, continuing to work alongside Eric De Brabandere. Once again we thank Carsten for his immensely valuable contributions to the journal – past, present, and future.