Description: Jurisprudence has up until recently largely neglected international law as a subject of philosophizing. The Nature of International Law tries to offset against this deficiency by providing a comprehensive explanatory account of international law. It does so within an analytical tradition, albeit within the one which departs from the nowadays dominant method of the metaphysically-driven conceptual analysis. Instead, it adopts the prototype theory of concepts, which is directed towards determining typical features constitutive of the nature of international law. The book's central finding is that those features are: normativity, institutionalization, coercive guaranteeing, and justice-aptness. Since typical features are context sensitive, their specificities at the international level are further elucidated. The book, finally, challenges the often raised claim that fragmentation is international law's unique feature by demonstrating that international institutional actors, particularly adjudicative ones, largely perceive themselves as officials of a unified legal order.
Brief description: Miodrag A. Jovanovic is a Full Professor in Jurisprudence in the Faculty of Law at the University of Belgrade. His areas of interest are jurisprudence, philosophy of international law, legal theory of collective rights, political theory of multiculturalism, federalism and legal and political nature of the EU. He is a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the 2016 Brandon Fellow of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge. He has previously published Collective Rights: A Legal Theory (Cambridge, 2012).
Review Quotes: 'Legal philosophers have too often ignored international law as irrelevant, or because it is an embarrassment to their theories. In his innovate new book, The Nature of International Law, Miodrag Jovanovic properly brings international law back to the center of jurisprudential inquiry. As important, Jovanovic offers an important challenge to, and alternative to, conceptual analysis, in his prototype theory.' Brian H. Bix, Frederick W. Thomas Professor of Law and Philosophy, University of Minnesota