Book Review: JANE KELSEY, Serving Whose Interests? The Political Economy of Trade in Services Agreements. Abingdon: Routledge-Cavendish, 2008, 400 pp. ISBN-10 0415448220, £29.99 (pbk)
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
| DOI | 10.1177/09646639090180040705 |
| Author | Alessandra Asteriti |
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
necessary for successful discourse, identified a system of rules of discourse which
provided criteria of validity for any normative proposition. Simplifying Alexy’s classi-
fication, Pavlakos says, ‘one may distinguish between three kinds of rules of discursive
grammar: rules of logic; rules of rationality; finally, pragmatic rules for the utterance
of normative sentences’ (p. 225). Norms can motivate us, and it is pragmatic rules
which are particularly suitable for making sense of this. What in practice does motivate
us? If Kant’s fellow-rationalist Plato is right in The Republic, we can be motivated by
respect for force, by desire, and by reason. Our concern is with the knowledge of the
law, with the knowledge generated in legal practice: ‘norms precisely demonstrate
the reason-responsive character of legal practice, where responsiveness to reasons is
the essence of normativity’ (p. 228). Against both conventionalism and essentialism,
Pavlakos introduces in the book a new account of knowledge, pragmatic rationalism,
which ‘argues that nothing can be known unless it can function as a reason or a
constraint within . . . a practice’ (p. 239), ‘a practice of judging which is normatively
constrained by reasons’ (p. 239). Judging is ‘an integrated instance of thinking and
acting, or a practice, which asks for justifying reasons with respect to any cognitive
move performed within it’ (p. 239). ‘Something can be depicted (and known) as a fact
only if it can function as a reason for backing a cognitive move, i.e. a judgement, in
the practice’ (p. 239). Reasons in law must also ‘be in agreement with the minimal
account of autonomy, the one enshrined in the capacity of persons to judge’ (p. 11),
which means one capable of determining the reasons that form the basis of action. As
Kant (1962: 35, 71) said, ‘Everything in nature works according to laws. Rational
beings alone have the faculty of acting according to the conception of laws, that is
according to principles, i.e. have a will’, while ‘the autonomy of the will [is] the
supreme principle of morality’. Pavlakos develops these Kantian insights by way of
Alexy and provides his own closely argued resources for an exciting new future in
the theory of law. This is a very important book.
REFERENCES
Kant, I. (1783/1953) Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Manchester: Manches-
ter University Press.
Kant, I. (1962) Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Ethics. London: Longmans.
Kant, I. (2007) The Critique of Pure Reason. London: Penguin.
Walsh, W.H. (1990) Towards an Interpretation of Kant, 1990, privately printed after
his death.
JONATHAN GORMAN
The Queen’s University of Belfast, Northern Ireland
JANE KELSEY, Serving Whose Interests? The Political Economy of Trade in Services
Agreements. Abingdon: Routledge-Cavendish, 2008, 400 pp. ISBN-10 0415448220,
£29.99 (pbk).
Jane Kelsey’s book on the Trade in Services Agreements is a welcome contribution to
the field of trade law, as normally the intricacies of the technical subject matter limit
the access of critical scholarship to this important area of international law. Even at
the level of definitions, non-experts might find it difficult to conceptualize ‘trade in
services’, by which the cross-border movement of factors of production (informa-
tion, capital and labour) is intended. These can include such diverse phenomena as
570 SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 18(4)
To continue reading
Request your trial