At King's Agramant's camp: Old debates, new constitutional times

Abstract

The article explores the genesis of constitutionalism in the science of international law during the interwar years and offers a genealogical sketch of the fate of the constitutional idea from the Second World War to the emergence of a postreconstruction doctrine in the post–Cold War era. To account for the contemporary hydra-like renewal of constitutional parlance in international law, a series of converging factors, namely, fragmentation and deformalization, as well as the effects of empire and the illegitimacy of global governance on both domestic and international democratic grounds, are examined. The article goes on to argue that the terms of the debate, which shaped the foundational period of contemporary international law, today appear reversed in international legal scholarship and hints at how the field of international constitutionalism can be profitably enriched when set against the doctrinal background offered by the democratic debate in international law. The possibilities of this doctrinal cross-fertilization are shown by reference to three dimensions of emergence of the democratic principle, which, I argue, is the wind rose of international law.