Markus Gabriel

Corine Pelluchon

Christoph Horn

Ingo Venzke

Anna Katsman

Wilhelm Krull

Anna Luisa Lippold

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.

Ein Plädoyer für zukunftsorientierte Geisteswissenschaften

Auf dem Weg zu einer Neuen Aufklärung

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.

Towards a New Enlightenment - The Case for Future-Oriented Humanities

Kevin Jon Heller

Professor of International Law and Social Justice at the University of Amsterdam and Director Ingo Venzke

Professor of International Law and Security at the University of Copenhagen and Professor of Law Kevin Jon Heller

This volume brings together a group of renowned experts to discuss the question of whether international law could have developed differently. Contributors explore contingency in theory and practice across a range of fields, including those related to migrants and refugees, the sea and natural resources, and human rights.

On the Possibility of Different Legal Histories

Contingency in International Law

Challenging the classic narrative that sovereign states make the law that constrains them, this book argues that treaties and other sources of international law form only the starting point of legal authority. Interpretation can shift the meaning of texts and, in its own way, make law. In the practice of interpretation actors debate the meaning of the written and customary laws, and so contribute to the making of new law. In such cases it is the actor's semantic authority that is key - the capacity for their interpretation to be accepted and become established as new reference points for legal discourse. The book identifies the practice of interpretation as a significant space for international lawmaking, using the key examples of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the Appellate Body of the WTO to show how international institutions are able to shape and develop their constituent instruments by adding layers of interpretation, and moving the terms of discourse. The book applies developments in linguistics to the practice of international legal interpretation, building on semantic pragmatism to overcome traditional explanations of lawmaking and to offer a fresh account of how the practice of interpretation makes international law. It discusses the normative implications that arise from viewing interpretation in this light, and the implications that the importance of semantic changes has for understanding the development of international law. The book tests the potential of international law and its doctrine to respond to semantic change, and ultimately ponders how semantic authority can be justified democratically in a normative pluriverse.

On Semantic Change and Normative Twists

How Interpretation Makes International Law

Armin Von Bogdandy

Over the past two decades new international courts have entered the scene of international law and existing institutions have started to play more significant roles. The present volume studies one particular dimension of their increasing practice: international judicial lawmaking. It observes that in a number of fields of international law, judicial institutions have become significant actors and shape the law through adjudication. The contributions in this volume set out to capture this phenomenon in principle, in particular detail, and with regard to a number of individual institutions. Specifically, the volume asks how international judicial lawmaking scores when it comes to democratic legitimation. It formulates this question as part of the broader quest for legitimate global governance and places it within the context of the research project on the exercise of international public authority at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law.

On Public Authority and Democratic Legitimation in Global Governance

International Judicial Lawmaking

Ingo Venzke

Books

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