Cognitive conflicts and the making of international law: from empirical concord to conceptual discord in legal scholarship

This Article seeks to shed some light on the reasons guiding scholars in their choices pertaining to the cognition of international lawmaking. After a brief outline of the mainstream empirical construction of current norm-generating processes in international law (1) and a further detailed description of the main cognitive choices (value-facts) found in international legal scholarship (2), this Article elaborates on the driving forces behind each of the main value-facts permeating contemporary literature on international lawmaking (3). Particular attention is paid to static and dynamic conceptions of lawmaking based on subjects, the pedigree of rules, participation, impact, or a mix of them. This Article draws attention to the politics of empiricism and cognition with the aim of engaging in critical self-reflection on how international legal scholars and practitioners have been making sense of international lawmaking.