Non-Legality in International Law

Fleur Johns is an Associate Professor at the Sydney Law School, University of Sydney, and Co-Director of the Sydney Centre for International Law.

• 1. Making non-legalities in international law; 2. Illegality and the torture memos; 3. Black holes and the outside within: extra-legality at Guantánamo; 4. Doing deals: pre- and post-legal choice in transnational financing; 5. Receiving climate change: law, science and supra-legality; 6. Death, disaster and infra-legality in international law; Conclusion.

'A fantastic book - at once a serious contribution to legal theory and a fascinating read. 'The exception makes the rule' we say - Johns turns that around. How does law make, un-make and manage the exception? It has become routine to find war in the filigrees of peace. Johns finds the managerial work of law in all that seems beyond its reach - the illegal, the political, the economic and the barbaric. Johns proposes a powerful new agenda for research and a caution about the common wish that all might be well were law finally 'brought to bear.' Law she tells us, is already there.' David Kennedy, Manley O. Hudson Professor of Law and Director of the Institute for Global Law and Policy, Harvard Law School