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1 Eur. J. Legal Stud. 8 (2007-2008)
International Law: Constitutionalism, Managerialism and the Ethos of Legal Education

handle is hein.journals/ejls1 and id is 10 raw text is: INTERNATIONAL LAW: CONSTITUTIONALISM, MANAGERIALISM AND THE ETHOS OF LEGAL EDUCATION Martti Koskenniemi* The judgment of the European Court of 7ustice in the Mox Plant case in 2oo6 is striking in its narrowness of vision. It imagines European law in fully autonomous terms, analogous to the national laws of European States under the strict dualism of late-I9th century jurisprudence. But Mox Plant is only one example of the increasing fragmentation of law beyond the nation-State into more or less autonomous technical boxes each geared to realise a particular ethos, the structural bias of a particular form of expertise. Not only European law but also trade law human rights law environmental law are examples of such boxes, systems for the management of particular types of problem from a particular perspective. But law ought not to be conceived in managerial terms. It should not be reduced into an instrument of the preferences of those who manage this or that technicalproblem-area. Legal training - in the European University Institute and elsewhere - should be about the conditions and limits ofparticularforms of managerial authority. And if education in international law should be about how to attain a universalperspective, in today's conditions this means the development of a critical sensitivity to the forms of international power exercised though particularforms of technical expertise. Last May the European Court of Justice gave its judgment in the MOX Plant case. The case had to do with the operation of a nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield, United Kingdom. A complaint had been raised by Ireland against the United Kingdom on account of the potential environmental effects of the plant under two international treaties. One was the OSPAR Treaty related to the protection of the environment of the North Sea. The other was the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea from 1982. Having heard about these proceedings, the European Commission, for its part, raised a claim against Ireland on account of the latter's having taken the United Kingdom -another member State of the European Union- to international arbitration, that is to say, to be subject to legal scrutiny under rules other than those of European law by bodies other than European ones. The Court found against Ireland on all grounds of the Commission's complaints. Ireland had failed to respect the exclusive jurisdiction of the ECJ and to cooperate with Community organs in accordance with the EC treaty.ill For an international lawyer, this is a stunning case. Not, however, because it was unprecedented, on the contrary. Since the late i9th century, nation-States understood one aspect of their sovereignty as the unconditional primacy of their legal order to anything imposed from the outside. The MOX Plant case is

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