How Interpretation Makes International Law

• Applies theoretical developments in linguistics and philosophy to give an innovative perspective on the role of language in shaping international law
• Provides a framework for normative assessment that challenges traditional understandings of how international law is made
• Demonstrates how the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the Appellate Body of the WTO have shaped and developed their constituent instruments through their interpretative discourses

New to this edition

• Includes a new postscript to the paperpack edition

Readership: Students and scholars of international law, the law of treaties, and the role of language in law; practitioners interested in the development of international law

Ingo Venzke, Research Fellow and Lecturer, Amsterdam Center for International Law, University of Amsterdam

Ingo Venzke is a Research Fellow and Lecturer at the Amsterdam Center for International Law, University of Amsterdam. He completed his doctorate in law at the University of Frankfurt while working at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg where he co-directed a research project on the exercise of public authority by international courts. Ingo was a Hauser Research Scholar at New York University and a Visiting Scholar at the Cegla Center for the Interdisciplinary Research of the Law, Tel Aviv University. He received his LL.M. from the University of London and his B.A. in International Relations from the University of Dresden.

"Ingo Venzke's insightful work on the changing of international norms by way of interpretation comes at an opportune moment ... Its main achievement lies in its critical approach to exposing where authority and power really lie." - Irin Buga, British Yearbook of International Law

"Venzke's book is a highly rewarding read because it provides a subtle account of how contemporary practices of interpretation make international law ... There is a lot in this book to interest the theoretically-inclined reader, but it deliberately remains accessible to a wide international law audience." - Joshua Paine, Australian Year Book of International Law

1: In the Beginning was the Deed
2: The Practice of Interpretation: A Theoretical Perspective
3: UNHCR and the Making of Refugee Law
4: Adjudication in the GATT/WTO: Making General Exceptions in Trade Law
5: Creative Interpretations: Normative Twists
6: Epilogue: In the End there is Eternity