Non-Legality in International Law

International lawyers typically start with the legal. What
is a legal as opposed to a political question? How should
international law adapt to the unforeseen? These are the routes
by which international lawyers typically reason. This book
begins, instead, with the non-legal. In a series of case studies,
Fleur Johns examines what international lawyers cast outside
or against law – as extra-legal, illegal, pre-legal or otherwise
non-legal – and how this comes to shape political possibility.
Non-legality is not merely the remainder of regulatory
action. It is a key structuring device of contemporary global
order. Constructions of non-legality are pivotal to debate in
areas ranging from torture to foreign investment, and from
climate change to natural disaster relief. Understandings
of non-legality inform what international lawyers today do
and what they refrain from doing. Tracing and potentially
reimagining the non-legal in international legal work is,
accordingly, both vital and pressing.