David Kennedy and Martti Koskenniemi are without doubt two of the most gifted international law scholars on the contemporary scene. They are the ‘founding fathers’ of New Approaches to International Law (NAIL) which is articulated by ‘a group of legal academics’ wishing to ‘experiment with new methods and ideas’. The creation of NAIL owes much to the imagination and energy of Kennedy but Koskenniemi has been a crucial partner in the project. The initial intellectual impulse for NAIL came from Critical Legal Studies (CLS) which was influential at the time Kennedy entered law school. Critical Legal Studies scholars had ‘developed a range of doctrinal, historical, and theoretical accounts’ that revealed ‘the general limitations of liberalism in law’.