The future of international legal scholarship: Some thoughts on 'practice', 'growth', and 'dissemination'

Abstract

Like international legal scholarship, LJIL is in transition. Our colleagues, Larissa van den Herik and Jean d'Aspremont, who have shaped much of the role and plural identity of the journal over the past decade, in collaboration with our different sections, have passed leadership on to us, the new team of (co-)editors-in-chief. This editorial reflects on the changing role and function of scholarship in international law, a theme important to our predecessors and ourselves. This is to some extent a niche area. It has not received much attention in discourse. With some notable exceptions, legal journals are typically reluctant to address overarching meta-issues of discourse, i.e. issues of production of scholarship, the role of journals vis-à-vis other media, or the broader direction of the development of international legal scholarship. Such issues might be perceived as non-scientific by some. We feel that it is important to include such dimensions, including critical self-reflection on our discipline, in international legal discourse. © 2013 Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law.