The necessity of (Marxist) theory

The blight of managerialism

International law has notoriously and accurately been described as a ‘wasteland’ for theory. Of course, the tsunami of managerialist writing is informed by theories of law, international law and the world, but mostly unexamined and the more ideological for that. In this context the rise of what has been called the ‘New Stream’ of radical international law scholarship has been of immeasurable importance, with its project to ‘dislodge the discipline … from its stagnation … and rejuvenate the field as an arena of meaningful intellectual inquiry’.

‘The New Stream … stands as part of a broader movement in contemporary legal theory commonly known as Critical Legal Studies (CLS) or critical jurisprudence.’ The CLS movement is united in its critical attitude to mainstream legal theory and has drawn on eclectic bodies of thought to pursue this. This has led to a problem: despite its powerful critical tools, the New Stream has sometimes been left with a poverty of systematic theory. ‘[I]t is a movement in search of a theory, but at the same time it is a movement which has not agreed that such a theory is either possible or desirable.’

The New Stream and CLS's influences include: