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  • 19 - The Hidden Theology of International Legal Positivism

  • Edited by Pamela Slotte, John D. Haskell, University of Manchester
  • Book:
    Christianity and International Law
    Published online:
    17 May 2021
    Print publication:
    20 May 2021, pp 415-460

  • Summary

    This chapter is a study in the critical deconstruction of one of the most popular theoretical paradigms in modern international law and its basic ideological impact on international law as a discipline. The paradigm in question is voluntarist positivism, and the general thrust of its ideological impact on the discipline of international law, I am going to argue, has been to encourage within it the rise and spread of what one might call a theoretical culture of bad faith – a mix of false consciousness, self-censorship, and a “crooked attitude towards truth and knowledge”– particularly, in what concerns international law’s relationship with natural law and Christian theology.

    The last two sentences use a lot of notoriously ambivalent concepts. For the prevention of doubt, let me explain briefly how I understand them in these pages.