Abstract: Gerry Simpson has written what he is pleased to describe—tongue firmly placed in cheek—in the alternative as “the most useless book in the history of international law,” presumably saving any timid would-be-readers the trouble of checking for themselves. What the intrepid rest of us do get instead are six chapters showcasing in typical Simpsonian fashion what is possible in writing international law: sensitive lyrical expression, literary and doctrinal finesse, geopolitical wisdom, and that universal patience with everyone that is borne of historical knowledge (see Simpson 2004 and Simpson 2007 for earlier examples). The sophisticated, rich, and diverse chapters start “with a plea for new international laws” that is inflected in the “proverbial rather than the philosophical” tradition, if “tradition” itself is indeed apposite: “So, this book belongs in the tradition (but it can’t be anything as po-faced as ‘a tradition’) of the proverbial rather than the philosophical: a clandestine, barbarian international law of misreadings, perverse readings, marks, jokes, slips, accidents, (unintended) verbal resonances.” ; Full Text
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