Book review: PATRICK CAPPS, Human Dignity and the Foundations of International Law. Oxford: Hart, 2009, 306 pp., ISBN 9781841133577, £40 (hbk)
| Published date | 01 September 2010 |
| Date | 01 September 2010 |
| DOI | 10.1177/09646639100190030804 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Social & Legal Studies 19(3)
PATRICK CAPPS, Human Dignity and the Foundations of International Law. Oxford: Hart,
2009, 306 pp., ISBN 9781841133577, £40 (hbk).
For a book with the rousing title, Human Dignity and the Foundations of International
Law, one would be forgiven for expecting a stirring and emotive appeal to the interna-
tional community. Apart from one or two glimmers of emotion towards the end of the
book, however, Capps’s approach is strictly rhetoric-free. It is an unrelentingly ration-
alist argument, which places human dignity on a thoroughly rational footing following
the approach of Alan Gewirth, within a wider rationalist theory of international law. The
author’s aim in this intricately argued monograph is to advance comprehensive founda-
tions for international law within a Kantian philosophical tradition. Capps masterfully
integrates discussion of the work of influential thinkers across the spectrum of political
philosophy, legal philosophy and international law, including Kant, Weber, Hart,
Finnis, Lauterpacht, Weil; the list is long. Capps’ intention is that his general concept
of international law will provide a tool for critique and reform of the international legal
order. It is a lofty ambition; to give international lawyers the authority to deprive prac-
tices of the label of international law when judged as contrary to respect for human
dignity.
The first part of the book addresses the question of whether it is possible to generate
a general concept of international law. This ‘methodological problem’ also encom-
passes the international lawyer’s ‘ontological problem’ – does international law fall
within a general concept of (national state) law? – to which Capps answers in the
affirmative. The author makes the argument that a general concept of law, from which
a concept of international law will derive, must be rooted in recognition of the function
of law. The process of providing a response to the methodological problem seems at
times to take ground-clearing to extremes (this issue must surely have been the bane of
the author’s life); more than 100 pages in, the...
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