Dollmaier, Thomas

Eschenhagen, Philipp

English

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Summer Reading List of the #ÖFinding inspiration under the sun - Part IPhilipp Eschenhagen, Thomas Dollmaier 2020-08-19T09:10:03Out of all seasons, summer is the best time to read, in my opinion. You can find ashady spot below your favorite tree, sip wine outside while watching how daylightslowly surrenders to the night, or simply let your bare feet feel the warmth of theground below the grass. All of this while reading your favorite novel, newspaperor…academic text as a matter of fact. Before you stop reading and judge me forinterfering with your holiday mood, bear with me and let me explain why. While Istrongly recommend putting away the academic books for a little while, I also findthat the parameters of summer provide a great environment for inspiration. I myselfhave experienced that reading academic texts can be so much more rewardingwhen I am myself at ease and in a mindset of curiosity and inspiration. That thismindset is difficult to obtain in times of crisis goes without saying. However, the needfor inspiration and reflection might now be more acute than ever. For this reason, Iasked around the editing team of the #Ö. I wanted to find out what my colleagueshad been reading recently and what they would like to recommend to our readers.The following contributions are therefore inherently subjective, but hopefully theywill be able to draw your attention to a book that you find useful, interesting or eveninspiring.To utilize the wisdom and breadth of expertise of all of you, our readers, we wouldalso like to encourage you to tag us @Voe_Blog and post a picture of your favoritesummer reading(s) on Twitter with the hashtag #ösummerreading. If you have acolleague, friend or favorite academic that you think has some interesting bookswrapped inside his or her beach towel, nominate them. Let’s inspire each other bysharing what inspires us. The format of the recommendations below is different fromthe standard academic reviews we find in journals, and intentionally so. We wantedto keep it brief and accessible, and sometimes even personal, while also highlightingwhat we found made these contributions particularly worthwhile your (summer) time.Today, we start off with Philipp Eschenhagen’s review of ‘The Oxford Handbookon Law and Humanities’ by Simon Stern, Maksymilian del Mar, Bernadette Meyler(eds.) and my review of Quinn Slobodian’s ‘Globalists’. In a second post, SuéGonzáles Hauck introduces Lea David’s ‘The Past Can’t Heal Us’, Dana Schmalzreviews Étienne Balibar’s ‘Secularism and Cosmopolitanism’, and Sebastian Spitraprovides insights into Daniel Damler’s ‘Konzern und Moderne’ [ConsolidatedCompanies and Modern Times]. Quinn Slobodian, Globalists. The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism,Harvard University Press (2018). @zeithistoriker- 1 -If you look up the picturesque Lake Geneva in Switzerland, the scenery of this bookcould very well make it a romantic summer novel. According to Slobodian, however,it is the birthplace of global neoliberalism. Neoliberalism has become a buzzwordin politics and academia. Slobodian, however, approaches neoliberalism from anunusual and highly interesting perspective. Three elements of his approach standout specifically, namely the conceptual level of his analysis, his geographic focus aswell as the timeline.First, he addresses neoliberalism on the macro level of world order by focusing onthe architecture and the masterminds behind the global economic system beyondnation states. Second, he shifts the focus away from the Anglo-Saxon academicworld, and protagonists of the Chicago School like Milton Friedman, toward theEuropean continent and a group of academic elites around F. A. Hayek gatheringin Vienna and the Swiss Alps – the ‘globalists’ of the ‘Geneva School’ as Slobodiancalls them. And third, he expands the timeline of neoliberalism by also includingthe early first half of the 20th century. This expands the classic narrative aboutneoliberalism starting in the 1980s under Reagan and Thatcher.In a nutshell, Slobodian argues that the real focus of the neoliberal project is noton liberating the market per se. Rather, ordoglobalism focuses on redesigningstates, laws, and other institutions to protect the market from democratic processesand pressures for redistribution that could challenge the smooth functioning of asingle world economy. He calls this decoupling of the economy from democracy‘encasement’ through specific institutional design. In the terminology of Carl Schmitt,these institutions of multitiered governance are intended to ‘maintain the balancebetween the political world of imperium and the economic world of dominium’.Encasement is thus meant to ‘inoculate capitalism against the threat of democracy’– a threat posed by the electoral on the micro level as well as newly independentstates on the macro level.When reading this book, one has to keep in mind that Slobodian provides a historicalrather than purely legal account, even though he does put great emphasis on thelaw. But in line with the bigger trend of historicizing international law, this bookunearths insights for fruitful follow-up legal research, for example: What kind ofinternational legal institutions make it possible to ‘dethrone politics’, and how?Has law abetted or paralyzed demands for democratization and politicization byincreasingly powerful actors from the Global South? And how has the multipolarworld order we now live in transformed international (institutional) law? These aresome questions I had in mind when reading Slobodian’s fascinating piece. Maybethey also inspire you.Thomas Dollmaier Simon Stern, Maksymilian del Mar, Bernadette Meyler (eds.), The OxfordHandbook of Law and Humanities, Oxford University Press (2020).@ArsScripta, @MeylerBernie- 2 -I live in Hamburg, Northern Germany, where summer does not come often. In fact,until a few days ago it felt more like spring than summer, which allowed me to spendtime working on my PhD in mid-July by reading a few contributions of the OxfordHandbook of Law and Humanities. A few days ago, however, temperatures haverisen beyond 30 ºC – something that rarely happens in Hamburg. It makes youwonder: How does the experience of reading a collection of highly theoretical essaysin a law library compare to spending summertime by going for a swim or havingsome ice cream?The Oxford Handbook’s authors and editors would probably sympathize with thefocus on practice/experience evoked by the question as well as its merging ofsuperficially unrelated things such as swimming in a lake and reading an academicbook. It is precisely this synergetic quality that makes the handbook a valuablecollection of essays and certainly a worthwhile read even during the summer,although I am unsure it can parallel the pleasures of having a swim or some lemonice cream.Uncertainty, however, does not stand in the way of posing certain questions atall. In fact, the Handbook displays a fondness for the “uncertain”, which is so verypresent in the legal realm, but often ousted from its discourse. The Handbook isa fresh addition to a growing field of scholarship that approaches the legal withparticular attitudes and sensitivities. These include a sensitivity ‘to the irregularand the unpatterned’ or ‘to the apparently superficial, superfluous, unnecessary,insufficient’. This non-exhaustive enumeration illustrates an approach to the law thatdiverges from rule-centered and objectivity-oriented doctrinal jurisprudence. It opensup numerous paths of thought that allowed for a wide variety of contributions to theHandbook. As the editors put it: ‘no one framing, no one editorial strategy, no singleor even collective vision can do it justice.’What might be considered a weakness by many is also a strength: Almost everyreader will find a certain number of contributions relevant to her research interests.The Handbook’s eclecticism invariably comes hand in hand with an array offresh perspectives on marginal issues. At the same time, it offers a range ofmethodologies stemming from the humanities and being applied to the legal realm.Personally, I was able to further my understanding of legal performance (11. JulieStone Peters, ‘Mapping Law and Performance’; 17. Marett Leiboff, ‘Challengingthe Legal Self through Performance’) as well as legal materiality approaches (2.Hyo Yoon, Kang, Sara Kendall, ‘Legal Materiality’). I am particularly interested inhow these perspectives translate to the international legal realm, for instance whenconsidering the ‘materiality’ of international organizations or courts. I believe thatmost of the Handbook’s essays are transferrable to the international level in sucha manner. Christopher Warren’s contribution, ‘31. History, Literature, and Authorityin International Law’, deserves a specific mention, as it is particularly directed atinternational lawyers by proposing a ‘trilateral’ discussion between ‘literary critics,historians, and scholars of international law.’What more to wish for, besides ice cream and a swim in the lake?Philipp Eschenhagen- 3 - Cite as: Thomas Dollmaier & Philipp Eschenhagen, “Summer Reading Listof the #Ö – Finding inspiration under the sun – Part I”, Völkerrechtsblog, 19August 2020.- 4 -

Summer Reading List of the #Ö: Finding inspiration under the sun - Part I

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Summer Reading List of the #Ö: Finding inspiration under the sun - Part I

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