This chapter characterizes History as an interpretive discipline, one in which conclusions are drawn by applying critical thinking to the available evidence, rather than one that aims to achieve actionable results from experimental or observational results. It points out that History aims not at reproducible and definitive outcomes but at broadening and deepening inquiry. It seeks to define what kinds of questions historians most value, questions that contribute to and enable such deepening and widening inquiry. Finally, this chapter discusses in greater depth the methodological and epistemological division introduced in the Introduction, between those more attracted to the historicist tradition examined in Chapter 1 and those more attracted to the methods, aims, and epistemological assumptions of social-science theory and of critical social theory. The chapter discusses both the strengths and weaknesses of these competing traditions and the pedagogical benefit of introducing students to both – the unique intellectual flexibility that the study of the discipline of History can cultivate.

This chapter argues for an approach to teaching History rooted in the ethical position foundational to the discipline. That approach is based on respect for our students and for the discipline; in it instructors encounter and learn from their students in the same way that they encounter and learn from historical subjects, and instruction in History, just like research in History, focuses not on controlling outcomes but on engaging in an ethically authentic process. It offers six approaches to instruction that can help build this kind of relationship between instructors and students, and between students and the discipline. These include consulting our students regarding their interests and aims; building instruction around the process of inquiry; making pedagogical use both of the breadth of the discipline and of its complexity, diversity, and epistemological and methodological divisions; focusing on teaching analysis, critical thinking, and interpretation; and bringing students to see their engagement with History not only as a process by which they master specific bodies of knowledge and methods of thinking but also as an open-ended intellectual adventure.

This chapter reviews the perspectives and levels of an analysis that inform how an observation is made. This is done by demonstrating that there are two perspectives (language use and the human factor) and five levels (summation, description, interpretation, evaluation, and transformation) of analysis in discourse analysis. These perspectives and levels can be used to understand the frameworks of established methodologies, such as conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, and narrative analysis. After reading this chapter, readers will know that the analytic process can combine different perspectives and levels of analysis.

Gadamer’s attitude to Collingwood was marked by ambivalence: while promoting the Englishman on the one hand, Gadamer claimed on the other that the fundamental dimension of “hermeneutical mediation” had simply escaped him. In this paper, I aim both to assess Gadamer’s debt to Collingwood and the prima facie strength of his objections. First, I reconstruct steps by which ideas of Collingwood found their place in Gadamer’s hermeneutics in the 1950s, including the central “axiom of all hermeneutics”: the thesis that “we can understand a text only when we have understood the question to which it is an answer.” Second, I examine Gadamer’s main objections to Collingwood, the first one being based on a misunderstanding of Collingwood’s stance, while the second one hits home, and I argue in the final section that at issue here is Collingwood’s claim that it is possible to rethink exactly the same thought as that of, say, an historical agent, while Gadamer holds precisely the opposite view, that this is never possible.

This chapter discusses how to interpret the findings from six randomized experiments on community policing, and the implications for policymaking and police reform. The bottom line is that locally appropriate increases in the strength of community policing practices do not generate the changes to trust in the police, citizen cooperation, or crime reduction that we hypothesized or that its advocates claim. The evidence suggests, at a minimum, that caution should be exercised in advocating for the adoption or continuation of community policing in the Global South. New evidence may emerge that shows community policing can be effective in a different type of context, when implemented in response to demands from a social movement of citizen groups, with a different set of institutional preconditions, or in combination with other reforms, such as citizen accountability boards. Until it does, we suggest that it be deprioritized in the list of policy levers to reduce crime and build trust in police in the Global South.

These concluding remarks offer a sideways look at some issues raised by this book, taking their cue from the surviving iconography of the monument at the centre of Propertius 4 – the Temple of Palatine Apollo – to address the ideological implications of the different handling by Propertius and Virgil of Augustan mythmaking. Ultimately the many traces of Virgilian sensibility in Propertius, and of Propertian sensibility in Virgil, are easier to identify than to interpret. Yet Propertius’ obsessive Virgilian intertextuality (here distilled into a multi-part typology), while showing that the elegist is haunted by his epic confrère, is also an exercise of control that transcends generic anxiety to recognize and enact Virgil’s status as a classic of the Roman literary canon. Propertius’ Virgilian intertextuality, extending as it does to structural and stichometric parallels, may also have implications for the textual criticism of both authors, at least insofar as a Virgilian reading of Book 4 obtains. These last reflections find their way to a comparison with Shostakowich’s Fourteenth Symphony, where uncanny thematic, political and structual parallels with Propertius 4 give pause for thought.

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the role of judicial dialogue between international courts in the interpretation of customary international human rights law. Judicial dialogue refers to international courts’ spontaneous practice of referencing other international courts’ decisions or international instruments that are outside the international court’s own judicial system. International courts engage in this practice in order to both identify rules of customary international human rights law and reach common interpretations on the meaning and scope of norms protecting human rights. Through the analysis of international courts’ case law, this chapter discusses the impact of judicial dialogue consisting in cross-references to legal norms and judicialdecisions on the interpretation of rules protecting human rights, especially when judges use case law from other courts in support of their interpretation.

Effectiveness and efficiency in judicial decision-making are the most important objectives of any court. While this concerns primarily the final decisions that are rendered, it is also relevant to the judicial process and the legal reasoning that a court or tribunal carries out to reach its decision, in order to ensure continuity and coherence. Traditional understandings of the international judiciary have seen the judges’ role as one where they discover and declare the law by applying it at face value to the legal issues that have arisen within the case, thereby achieving effectiveness through what is said to be direct and clear application of the law. This sits rather uneasily with the identification of customary international law (CIL), which is by its very nature unwritten and established by identifying evidence of state practice and opinio juris. The aim of this chapter is to examine instances of judicial activism in the decision-making of international courts and tribunals during the determination and application of CIL and how that allows for either judicial effectiveness or ambiguity.

The uncertain character of customary international law (CIL) has been discussed time and time again among academics and practitioners. To most of them, the uncertain character of CIL entails a twofold defect: first, uncertainty is perceived with respect to the identification of the rule, since we may not know whether there is a valid legal rule; and second, uncertainty is perceived with respect to the content of the rule, since we may not know the precise meaning of the rule. Yet, what seems to be missing from the entire discussion is the mechanism by which CIL functions. Although a number of theories have been formulated, there are no persuasive answers that would explain when and how changes in CIL occur. In other words, the dynamics of CIL, as the driving force behind its evolution remain essentially unexplored. Providing answers to these questions requires an in-depth understanding not only of the structure of CIL but also of the processes that occur in and out of CIL during its operation as a social system. This chapter uses complexity science to describe the functioning of CIL and explore CIL’s construction as a social system.

The interpretation of unwritten norms is fraught with difficulty, as the boundaries between the existence of a norm and the determination of its content can become blurred. Interpreters may return to the evidence of the norm’s existence in order to determine its content or it may be that interpretation itself is part of the constitutive process of unwritten norms. This confusion is exacerbated by a lack of established methods and procedures for the interpretation of unwritten international law, which includes not only custom but also general principles of law. While it is commonplace to speak of custom and general principles under the umbrella of ‘general international law’, it is unclear whether questions of interpretation are to be approached in the same manner for both categories of norms or whether custom and general principles may assist in the interpretation of one another. The central objective of this chapter is to examine the interactions between these two categories of norms in the context of interpretation. More specifically, it considers whether general principles of law may play a role in the interpretation of customary rules.

In its case law the International Court of Justice has repeatedly suggested the idea that rules of customary international law (CIL) do not operate in a vacuum but, instead, are to be understood against the background of other rules of the international legal system. This observation, although somewhat unsurprising, shows that the sources of international law exist in close interconnection – something that is also visible if one looks at the rules of interpretation contained in Article 31 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Accordingly, ‘any relevant rules of international law applicable in the relations between the parties’ must be taken into account, together with the context, when interpreting treaty provisions. The question addressed in this chapter is whether or not the same can be said of the interpretation of customary rules. In other words, if we look at the practice of international courts and tribunals, is it possible to reach the conclusion that CIL rules, too, must be interpreted with the cognizance of any relevant rules of international law applicable between the parties?

The process of identifying and interpreting norms of customary international law, while appearing to be primarily based on an inductive analysis of state practice and opinio juris, is sometimes a deductive exercise based on logic and reason. Logic permeates every decision in international law. Logic manifests itself inherently throughout the process and can be identified in all steps of reasoning in identifying, interpreting and applying customary international law. Logic, however, can constitute the application of either an inductive or deductive inference. This chapter focuses on situations in which the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ) applied a deductive approach, identifying or interpreting norms of customary international law without seeming to consult state practice and opinio juris. Specifically, it considers whether norms that can be reasonably inferred or deduced from existing rules, or that are simply logical for the operation of the international legal system, can be identified as norms of customary international law under a complementary, supplementary or distinctive interpretive approach.

When faced with the inevitable task of interpreting customary international law (CIL), what should a court do and what should it consider? Should it engage in an ‘inductive’ process of sifting through available evidence of state practice and opinio juris or a deductive process designed to reason logically from principles embedded in the rule? Should the court invoke something like the rules of treaty interpretation with their focus on good faith, ordinary meaning, context, and object and purpose? International law doctrine falls short here. Figuring out how to interpret and apply custom requires a theory of custom, a focus on the normative stories we tell. This reveals that there is not just one story explaining why custom should be a source of law, but multiple stories. What we call ‘custom’ may represent or draw from at least three different sources of law: Negotiated Law, Legislated Law and Adjudicated Law. This chapter aims to show that the non-treaty rules derived from each draw on different sources of legitimacy, operate according to different logics, dictate different methods of interpretation, and favour different methods for resolving disputes.

Customary international law (CIL) is particularly vulnerable to the accusation that it is no more than ‘mere assertion’, a creation of the courts, if not downright fantasy. Yet it is in CIL that one finds the strongest claim to objectivity in international law. It is expressed in the doctrine that one of the elements of CIL is state practice, which represents the ‘objective’ element of CIL. It is thought to supplement the ‘subjective’ or ‘psychological’ element of CIL: opinio juris. This chapter argues that the notion of state practice as a set of ‘material facts’ that should be ‘identified’ and from which customary norms can be ‘induced’ is grounded in obsolete epistemology. The identification of state practice is more adequately described as a selection of what deserves to be counted as state practice. It is argued that the starting point for this selective process is opinio juris. Opinio juris does not come after the fact, as a subjective feeling of obligation that is superadded to a set of otherwise objective facts. Opinio juris is the indispensable conceptual framework without which habits and usages cannot even be ‘seen’ as state practice.

Interpretation is ubiquitous in everyday life. We constantly interpret a variety of objects. Interpretation is central to the practice of international law, too. Arguing about international law’s content is the everyday business of international lawyers, and this often includes arguing about the existence and content of norms of customary international law (CIL). Although a number of scholars recognise that CIL can be interpreted, disagreements remain as to the precise methods and extent of CIL interpretation. Such disagreements are born of a common concern to secure competently made, coherent and accurate interpretations of CIL, given the latter’s non-textual nature. This chapter aims to explore in a preliminary manner two related questions regarding CIL interpretation: (1) Is it necessary, or even possible, to strive towards coherence in the interpretation of CIL? (2) Are there any possible indicators of (in-)coherence in that respect? Providing answers to these questions depends on how one understands coherence in the first place, including its relation to legal reasoning. A substantial part of the chapter will therefore deal with that as well.

Chapter 8 examines regulatory rules, beginning with an examination of written rules. It underlines the inescapability of interpretive uncertainty and considers ways in which that uncertainty can be addressed, including varying the precision of rules, how they are specified, the publication of interpretive ‘guidance’ (sometimes called ‘soft law’) and the delegation of detailed standard-setting to ‘technical experts’.

This chapter advocates an ethic of “symmetric interpretation” as a solution to the challenges outlined in Chapter 1. To prevent undue politicization of constitutional law, judges should favor, when possible, constitutional understandings that are “symmetric” in the sense of conferring valuable protections across both sides of the nation’s major political and ideological divides. By the same token, they should disfavor understandings that frame constitutional law as a matter of zero-sum competition between rival partisan visions. Favoring symmetric understandings in this sense will not always be possible. When it is possible, however, favoring symmetry may provide a point of common orientation for judges with differing policy preferences and interpretive outlooks. Reflecting this approach's inherent appeal, an inchoate preference for symmetry is already evident in judges’ opinions, oral argument questions, and reasoning.

This chapter advances theoretical reasons to support symmetric interpretation. First, favoring symmetry accords with the Constitution’s character as a comparatively terse, “framework” document focused on establishing democratic procedures rather than definitive policies. Second, an ethic of symmetric interpretation accords with widely accepted features of judicial role-morality. Finally, symmetric interpretation accords with the framers’ own constitutional aspirations and interpretive methods. Multiple widely accepted theoretical considerations in constitutional law thus support preferring symmetric understandings when possible.