Critical Approaches to Jurisdiction and International Law

Abstract

This chapter addresses the ways in which critical jurists have grappled with the character and transmission of forms of authority in a variety of settings. Specifically, it describes and comments on two aspects of critical approaches to jurisdiction and international law: one emphasizing the place of jurisdiction within critical discourse and the other thinking critically with jurisdictional forms, arrangements, and practices. In both accounts, holding on to the prudential character of jurisdiction has drawn attention to the conduct of office and relations of law. In doing this, the chapter sets the concern with jurisdiction in the office of jurisprudence and treats critical approaches as, at least in part, a training in office. This training has been characterized in terms of an ethic of responsibility, although what this might mean varies considerably amongst the critical approaches considered in the chapter.