Legal systems across the world contain the obligation to prevent ‘absurd interpretations’ of law. In international law, an instruction to avoid ‘manifestly absurd’ interpretations can be found in Article 32 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. This gives rise to at least two questions that I will take up in this article. First, what is meant by the ‘absurd’ that is to be avoided in legal interpretation. The short answer to this question is: no one knows exactly. The absurd, by its very nature, resists definition in pre-given categories, as I will argue on the basis of four core thinkers on the absurd: Søren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Thomas Nagel. The second question is more technical and easier to answer: how should lawyers try to avoid absurd interpretations? Here, I turn to absurdist writing and the theatre of the absurd for assistance. Absurdist writing and theatre have developed a number of techniques to make the absurd appear, to let the audience experience that something is fundamentally out of tune. Lawyers use similar techniques, but in reverse and with an opposite purpose: they add exposition, narrative, reasonable language, and stable, rational legal personae. In this way, they boost the rationality and reasonableness of the legal order. However, to come full circle, it is exactly the pretension of rationality and reasonableness that makes the law vulnerable to manifestations of the absurd. The rationality of law is the springboard for the very same absurdity it tries to suppress.

In the past ten years or so, several documentaries on international criminal justice have been produced, shown at film festivals, and used for advocacy and educational purposes. On some occasions, artists, humanitarian organizations, and the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) have worked closely together in the production of documentary films. Documentaries have thus become important tools for education and the spread of imageries of international criminal justice. So far, however, international legal scholars have largely shied away from researching cinematic representations of their field. In this article, I seek to remedy this by focusing on a family of four recent influential documentaries related to the ICC: The Reckoning, The Court, Prosecutor, and Watchers of the Sky. All four use similar modes of representation, narration and promotion and basically communicate the same message about the Court. My article critically analyzes how such artistic interventions have helped create specific images, stories, and sentiments.

Legal equality of states is a fundamental principle of international law. The contributions in this special volume examine this principle in today's international law context while engaging also with Pieter Kooijmans' book The Doctrine of the Legal Equality of States. This chapter introduces this 1964 book and briefly discusses the various contributions in the present volume against the background of this book.

The past few decades have witnessed a fundamental change in the perception of threats to the security of states and individuals. Issues of security are no longer primarily framed in terms of threats posed by an identifiable, conventional enemy. Instead, post-Cold War security policies have emphasised the global and radically uncertain nature of threats such as environmental degradation, terrorism and financial risks. What are the implications of this transformation for one of the constitutive principles of international society: state sovereignty? Existing literature has provided two possible answers to this question. The first focuses on the alleged need for states to seek international cooperation and to relax claims of national sovereignty. In Ulrich Beck's terminology, this would amount to a transformation of sovereign states into ‘cosmopolitan states’. The second takes the opposite position: in response to uncertain threats states rely on their sovereign prerogatives to take exceptional measures and set aside provisions of positive law. In Beck's terminology, this would amount to the creation of a ‘surveillance state’. None of these two answers, however, does justice to the complex relation between sovereignty, power and (international) law. As this article will show, the invocation of radical uncertainty has led to a transformation in sovereignty that cannot be captured in terms of the cosmopolitan/surveillance dichotomy. What is at stake is a more fundamental transformation of the way in which sovereignty is used to counter threats. Based on a study of the UN Counterterrorism Committee, this article demonstrates how state sovereignty is used as a governmental technology that aims to create proactive, responsible subjects.

Necessity plays a significant role in any legal system as unpredictable or extraordinary situations can require the adoption of measures departing from the normally applicable law in order to protect basic values and fundamental interests. International law is not an exception. The admissibility of the adoption of measures on grounds of necessity has been accepted by international courts and tribunals, in state practice, including international conventions, as well as in doctrine.

The past few decades have witnessed a renewed interest in the work of Carl Schmitt. Scholars from various disciplines have claimed that Schmitt’s critique of universalism, together with his analysis of irregular warfare, provides useful lenses to make sense of the post 9/11 world. In this article, I will critically assess whether Schmitt’s work is indeed useful for understanding the post 9/11 world. To that end, I will concentrate on one of the core arguments put forward by Schmitt: that the laws of armed conflict are unable to regulate irregular warfare, including acts of terrorism. In order to determine the validity of Schmitt’s arguments, I will focus on one of the instruments used in contemporary counter-terrorism policies: the deliberate killing of specific individuals who are regarded as a security threat (‘targeted killing’). Based on an analysis of US and Israeli practice, the article argues that using Schmitt’s work as an analytical tool yields mixed results. While his analysis of irregular warfare remains relevant for contemporary conflicts, his denouncement of universalism blinds us to the transformational potential of international law.

The past few decades have witnessed a proliferation in the writings on risk and uncertainty. Led by the work of writers such as Beck, Luhmann, Ewald, and Giddens, scholars across the humanities and social sciences have been engaged in reflections on the ways in which our understanding of risk structure informs decision-making and the attribution of responsibility. One of the central topics in this body of literature is the transformation of the concept of risk in postmodern societies.