Les nouvelles approches du droit international
Résumé
To define “New Approaches to International Law” is at first glance a gamble, considering the eclectic nature of this doctrinal tendency. First associated with its Harvard members, this project grew in the 1990s into various forms outside of the American continent. What is its state in 2014? To what extent this unstable coalition of researchers, whose identity frontiers have evolved, kept their promise to reinvent the discipline of international law? Through the integration of the deconstruction method in the analysis of international law, its members undeniably renewed its understanding from an interdisciplinary perspective. They demonstrated how law couldn’t be understood without considering its inherent indetermination, and thus proposed a very stimulating critical analysis of the relations between legal rules, the neutrality of which is considered an illusion. But, through incessant deconstruction, and in spite of their self-criticism, it seems that they did not succeed in fully having their voices heard within doctrine. At times qualified as nihilists, tenants of the “New Approaches”, through emphasising the impossible neutrality of legal rules, invite to a constant reinterpretation of such rules and, in a subsequent manner, to a form of manipulation of law by political decision-makers. However, this does not question the significant contribution of the movement to a better understanding of the foundations of own discipline. © 2016, Societe Quebecoise de Droit International. All rights reserved.