International Law in Latin America or Latin American International Law? Rise, Fall, and Retrieval of a Tradition of Legal Thinking and Political Imagination

摘要

Is there a distinctively Latin American way of understanding global public order? How have Latin American international lawyers reflected upon alternative global designs and their implications for the region? When posed in relation to contemporary Latin America, these questions become unexpectedly tricky, since the discipline of international law does not offer to international lawyers situated at the periphery adequate analytic tools for understanding the meaning and uses of international law in their own context. Examining peripheral, regional, or national legal traditions, however, not only illuminates similarities and differences between alternative conceptualizations of the international world, but also helps to recognize structural constraints and unequal power relationships operating within the discipline of international law that might hamper efforts to imagine alternative visions of global order through the language of international law.