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Document Type

Article

Abstract

Inquiries into questions of time, history, and international law have recently come to the fore. So far, however, many studies have only examined developments in international law from a temporally and thematically fragmented, brief, and narrow perspective. Due to international law’s growing normative and institutional fragmentation and emphasis on specific crises, episodes, and events, many analyses focus on transient trends and particular facets of international law. This study suggests an alternative to these constrained viewpoints: a thorough, multilayered, and broad perspective to questions of international law, drawing on Fernand Braudel’s tripartite theory of time.

Braudel’s theory of time provides valuable insights into the temporal analysis of international law and demonstrates the value of exploring international law using diverse temporalities. Braudel imagined history as a three-layered sea. The first type of history, geographical time, is almost immovable and timeless—it focuses on the interaction between humanity and the environment, and it corresponds to the deep seabed. The second type of history, social history, is structural and focuses on social groups—it is comparable to marine currents, which travel across time and space beneath the sea’s surface. The third type of history, known as history of events (histoire événementielle) or individual history, focuses on people, military campaigns, and political events—such time is comparable to the sea’s surface and the waves’ constant, relentless motion. In Braudel’s view, to understand social phenomena, historians should constantly move from the ocean’s surface to the deep seabed, and again from the ocean floor to the water’s surface.

This study examines the promises and potential pitfalls of transplanting Fernand Braudel’s tridimensional vision of time and his wide temporal perspective from the field of history to international law. My argument is that adopting Braudel’s multilayered temporal approach and weaving together different temporalities and scales can help international lawyers step out of the comfort zone of their specialized subfields, thereby overcoming the fragmentation of international law and gaining a broader perspective. Adopting this multilayered approach can also help them see solutions to seemingly intractable problems. The article then examines contemporary litigation where a long-term perspective can help resolve international disputes.

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