INTERVIEW: Anne SCHULT (NYU) interviews Martti KOSKENNIEMI on "Sovereignty, Property and the Locus of Power" (Journal of the History of Ideas Blog)

(image source: JHI Blog)

The Blog of the Journal of the History of Ideas has published an interview with Martti Koskenniemi.

First paragraph:

Anne: Your work has long explored the nature of governance through international law—in the past as much as in the present. The book project you have been working on over the past years, which explores the correlation of sovereignty and property in international law, is no different in this regard. As you seek to illustrate, sovereignty arises from an often hidden foundation of private property relations, while these exact relations are bound to be delimited by what we call ‘public power’—meaning we ultimately have been, and continue to be, governed by both. This argument re-emphasizes some of the questions your earlier work has tackled with regard to the critical role of international law in politics—or, to be more accurate, international law asinternational politics. But it also appears to address a more fundamental problem in the conceptualization of international law by suggesting that seemingly benign relations of private property are intrinsically connected to the realm of international power struggles. In your mind, how does this project depart from, or perhaps even in part revise, your prior work on the origins of modern international law?

Read further here.
(source: ESILHIL Blog)