Between Power and Persuasion: On International Institutions' Authority in Making Law
Abstract:
Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, this contribution places authority between power and persuasion. It first argues that authority is a specific kind of power that claims to be legitimate because it connects to the consent of the addressee. But at the same time, authority needs to constrain even if it is not met with agreement. Otherwise it would collapse into persuasion through arguments. What sustains authority between power and persuasion is a discursive practice that builds up a social expectation and that ties actors to the command of the authority. It is with attention to the larger discursive practices that international institutions' authority in making law is best understood. The notion of semantic authority is introduced in order to capture international institutions' capacity to establish reference points for legal discourse that other actors can hardly escape.Keywords: DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTION; INTERNATIONAL AUTHORITY; PERSUASION; POWER; SEMANTIC AUTHORITY
Document Type: Research Article
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5235/20414005.4.3.354
Publication date: 2013-11-01
Transnational Legal Theory publishes high-quality theoretical scholarship that addresses transnational dimensions of law and legal dimensions of transnational activity. It explores how transnational forces and ideations affect debates within existing traditions or schools of legal thought. Similarly, the journal debates general theories about law in light of transnational contexts.
It also explores fresh understandings of international and comparative law. The journal has a special interest in the intersections of public international law, private international law and comparative law. Other areas of interest include the interaction of systems or orders along such axes as: constitutional law theory on the reception of various forms of external law by states' legal orders; jurisdictional theory on the external projection of states' legal orders; public law theory on the evolution of regional legal orders; panstate religious normativity; and the theorization of law as global.
