This is an advanced research seminar on public international law. In the past two centuries, though legal positivism (thus lawyers and conventional legal scholars) dominate the development of international law, both students of new legal realism and political science has begun to rediscover various “political” functions of international law in the past decade. Just to name a few, why and how international law influences states and individual behaviors regardless of lacking of coercive mechanism; why and how conventional functions of sovereignty transforms in the post-World War II era; how to understand the international law in action as opposed to international law in theory. In sum, the fundamental “political” question of international law is why nation complies with international law. Such “political” revival of the research of international law conducted by both international legal and political science scholars suggests a new demand for international law: a coherent international law research methodology from social science perspectives both theoretically and empirically. In hence, we will spend about half of the semester to look into this new international law methodological trend in this seminar, in addition to some of the conventional international law subjects.
In consistent with the aforementioned course interests, this seminar is organized in two parts. The first part of the course provides a general theoretical/ methodological introduction to international law. In response to the aforementioned new demand for re-understanding the international law, this part will put emphasis on cultivating each participant’s ability of asking, answering, and interpreting the role or function of international law, as understood from various methodological and theoretical perspectives. In specific, policy-oriented, rational-choice, transnational legal process, and feminists approaches to international law will be explored. The second part of the course offers three selected specialized areas of international law: economic law, human rights law and the law of the sea.