Rethinking the Foundations: Sovereignty, Community and the International Legal Order from a Social Pluralist Perspective

Abstract

An exploration on the social and legal ontologies of the late Dutch Christian philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977) as these apply to international law. Indeed, for the most part, scholarship on Dooyeweerdian philosophy -- expressed to its fullest in his magisterial three-volume work The New Critique of Theoretical Thought (1953-1958) -- has largely centered on its domestic elaboration in relation to public justice as a task of the state. The paper proffers a first elaboration on some key themes in contemporary international law from a Dooyeweerdian perspective. Yet, I can only hope in this present work to deal with what my imagined readers may treat as a preliminary inquiry into the implications of the Dutch philosopher's social ontology, in other words, his theory of sphere sovereignty, on such issues as sovereignty (the individuality of states), the United Nations (as an embodiment of notions of community in the international plane) and international justice (the notion of collective/communal concern in the context of an international ordre public). Here I interact with such diverse international legal theorists as Crawford, Slaughter, Koskenniemi, Mieville, Franck, Nijman and Lauterpacht, among others, to illuminate, clarify or otherwise reformulate Dooyeweerdian thought in relation to such issues in international legal theory as sovereignty, international legal personality and international community.

Keywords: Social Pluralism, Dooyeweerd, international legal theory, international legal personality, sovereignty, community, reformational philosophy, philosophy of international law

JEL Classification: N40