Introduction

Most topics of academic legal writings have probably been chosen because there are no answers, or contradictory ones, to a particular problem in the recognised legal sources. One approach is to choose, explicitly or implicitly, one of several international legal ‘methods’, ‘theories’ or ‘schools’, or to attempt to create a new one. If such a choice is explicitly described before the legal problem is embarked upon, the study is provided with a scholarly appearance. The idea of the investigation and the choice of method may seem to be the result of ‘some nonmethodological method, a nonpolitical academic standard that allows that method or politics to be discussed from the outside of particular methodological or political controversies’. Koskenniemi argues that the initial question of what method should be chosen for the study assumes:

Even if it were possible to choose a theory and method from such neutral ground, this choice would require a meta-method, which in turn would require a meta-meta method and so on. This, of course, is not how it happens, personal choices must be admitted at some point.