Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T14:47:35.070Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - The Law of Receding Origins: Repetition and the Identification of Customary International Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2022

Wouter Werner
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
Get access

Summary

Chapter two deals with the impossibility to account for the rise of a rule of customary law. I was once more confronted with this problem when I read the ILC Report on the identification of rules of customary law. The report contains a courageous attempt to develop a methodology to identify such rules in an objective way. However, along the way, many of the age-old problems regarding the existence and rise of rules of customary law reappear. The impossibility of grounding a method for customary law, I argue, has to do with the repetitive nature of this body of law. Rules of customary law only exist in and through restatements that present them as already valid. To get a better grasp of the kind of repetitive logic that drives customary law, I compare it to the logic of repetition at work in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. In both cases, what is essential is and must remain absent; it is nevertheless made operative through acts of repetition and representations. Yet, customary law is also radically different as it employs what Kierkegaard called "repetition forward," a form of repetition that comes with change and transformation over time.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×