Jean d'Aspremont (Sciences Po Law School; University of Manchester – School of Law) has posted Three International Lawyers in a Hall of Mirrors (Leiden Journal of International Law (2019 Forthcoming)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This article uses the metaphor of the hall of mirrors to produce three dis-tinct images of the international lawyer. The hall of mirrors refers here to the extent to which international legal discourses are built on self-referential mechanisms tantamount to mutually reflecting mirrors, by virtue of which movements and postures are reproduced ad infinitum without disclosing the origin thereof. According to the first image produced by virtue of the meta-phor of the hall of mirrors, the international lawyer feels invincible and fully makes use of the hall of mirrors to allow international legal discourses to ob-scure their origins and thrive in foundationlessness. The second image de-picts a vulnerable international lawyer who is deprived of self-referential mechanisms for the production of international legal discourses because the mirrors have been shattered or the light turned off or simply because she has closed her eyes. The third image is that of a self-reflective international law-yer who is neither invincible nor vulnerable but consciously standing be-tween the mutually reflecting mirrors wearing fissured spectacles and with no intention to smash the mirror, turn off the light or close her eyes.
This article ends with a few observations on the coexistence of these three inter-national lawyers – the invincible, the vulnerable, and the self-reflective – standing together in the hall of mirrors, possibly not even seeing one anoth-er. By developing these three distinct images, this paper sheds light on how the contingency of legal doctrines, modes of legal reasoning and legal cate-gories is experienced by international lawyers. In doing so, this article refines non-necessitarian understandings of contemporary international legal thought and practice while enabling reform of the way in which interna-tional lawyers’ categories of thought, speech and argumentation constitute (and intervene in the problems of) the world.