Conservative and progressive visions in French international legal doctrine

Abstract

How can one develop a progressive agenda of international law, while at the same time not sacrificing the unity and rigour which traditional formalism can appear to claim? In France formalists will not come out of a limited agenda of preservation of the integrity of the French and other classical states, while the progressives, searching for grounds of solidarity in international society, tread uncertainly in the formlessness of material demands made upon the law. Dupuy finds a material basis of unity of the legal order in a triad comprising the general principles of international law, the instrument of the legal fiction and the Kantian theory of the transcendental grounding of the validity of law. Dupuy places the task of developing such a material law in the hands of the international judiciary, despite reservations about their performance. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any judiciary with the philosophical skill to undertake the tasks he sets them. In fact it is Pierre Legendre, the type of polymath which French culture so readily supports, who demonstrates how problematic is the formalist legal thinking based upon the classical French state. Despite Dupuy's conciliatory spirit towards his formalist compatriots he has opened a Pandora's box for them. © EJIL 2005; all rights reserved.