Steven Arrigg Koh (Boston University School of Law) has posted Law's Duality on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Frédéric Mégret's engaging contribution, A Look Back at The Women's Hague Peace Conference: What Contribution To International Law Today?, exposes a legal duality. On one hand, the legalist perspective: law is a closed system. From this perspective, law is objective, hard, universal, and bounded. On the other hand, the sociocultural perspective: law is a human practice. From this perspective, law is subjective, organic, particular, and porous. This Essay reads Mégret's analysis of the 1915 International Congress of Women in The Hague as a "sociocultural challenge," disrupting the legalist perspective on international law, war, and peace during World War I. This Essay lauds this women's peace movement through this lens, and then argues that such sociocultural challenge must continue to be fostered within deeper theoretical sophistication in legal scholarship, legal education, and legal practice.