Jean d’Aspremont (Sciences Po Law School and University of Manchester – School of Law) has posted Is an International Organization a Thing? (23 IOLR (2026) 1-8) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This article interrogates the seemingly self-evident proposition that international organizations possess an inherent, material existence independent of perception, experience, and interpretation — a quality the author terms “thingness.” It argues that the thingification of international organizations, far from being a neutral or inevitable scholarly posture, is itself a discursive product of the law of international organizations: a constructed epistemological move that presents its object as pre-given and unmediated. The article advances two grounds for resisting this practice. First, on epistemological grounds, attributing thingness to international organizations reprises a pre-Kantian dogmatic metaphysics that repudiates the constructivist tradition dominating modern legal and philosophical thought, foreclosing the critical possibilities that constructivism enables. Second, on genealogical grounds, thingification carries a deeply troubling intellectual ancestry, having served as a foundational epistemology of authoritarian governance — from fascist discourse of the twentieth century to contemporary authoritarian politics — precisely because it forecloses interpretation, debate, and alternative representation. The article concludes that international lawyers studying international organizations ought to cultivate a constructivist sensibility, continuing to debate and reimagine what international organizations are, rather than endorsing an epistemology of convenience.
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