Invitation to a Thomas Franck Lecture by the Institut für Völkerrecht und Europarecht at Freien Universität Berlin with Prof. David Dyzenhaus (Toronto). 

David Dyzenhaus is University Professor of Law and Philosophy at the University of Toronto and currently Visiting Professor at the Department of Law, Freie Universität Berlin in his capacity as awardee of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation's Research Prize.

Abstract:

The War Against International Law in the UK: The ‘Common’ vs. the ‘Public’ Good

My focus is on a recent war waged in the UK against international law. But while international law was the main target of the war, it turned into a war against the rule of law. In particular, my focus is on two Oxford Law Professors, John Finnis and his protégé Richard Ekins, who have been largely responsible for providing the theoretical ammunition required in the kind of war that is waged entirely with words: the war of the extreme right within the Conservative governments of the past few years against the rule of law. The war is fought under the banner of the ‘common good’--the good of a particular kind of Christian community, most prominently an extreme rightwing version of Catholicism known as ‘Catholic integralism’. It seeks to ‘integrate’ state and society by gaining control over state institutions to enable the use of law to override the distinction between church and state, enforcing on its citizens a set of ‘moral virtues’ so that they can ‘flourish’ in the ‘community’ organized around a preordained common good. I will argue that this understanding of the ‘common good’ differs sharply from the ‘public good’ at which the rule of law aims with its intrinsic commitment to the authority of international law, a commitment as fundamental to ‘dualist’ legal orders such as the UK as it is to ‘monist’ legal orders.