Abstract
In many respects, the history of international law is intertwined with that of the concept, indeed the standard, of civilization(s) in the West. Indeed, civilization has marked the evolution of this law: from a "right of civilization" of other civilizations in the plural as early as the 17thcentury , to a "right-civilization" in the singular as early as 1945. Since the turn of the millennium, however, as in other contexts, civilizations have caught up with international law. In this new era of civilizational tension, two fundamentalisms are threatening the various "dialogue of civilizations" initiatives underway in contemporary international law: on the one hand, a standardizing universalism (and the denial of civilizations it induces), and on the other, cultural relativism (and its essentialization of civilizations, making their conflict inescapable).
Sensitive to the perils of this third phase of civilization in international law, and to the importance of "unity in diversity", some internationalists have sought to revive one or other form of jus gentium and to identify, through comparison, the principles of a new common law. For the time being, however, these projects have paid little heed to the institutional, and therefore political, dimension of this law, which is so necessary to the universal legitimacy of a supposedly transcivilizational law. It is to the institutional dimension of what we might call the new "concert" of civilizations (which is realized as much in dispute as in harmony, as its double etymology reveals) that this contribution is devoted.
Its argument is that the key to the seemingly insoluble tension between the universal and the particular in international law lies in the very special relationship between (Western, now international) law and civilization. It is only by understanding these relationships that we will be able not only to grasp the historical strength of European public law, now international law, and its weakness in the face of some of the opposing civilizational claims being made against it today, but also to reveal and exploit the resources already available to contemporary international law in order to avoid the pitfalls of the new imperialisms that threaten its principle. Awareness of international law's civilizational resources will make it possible to identify and correct some of the fundamentalist flaws in current international law practice, and to draw the necessary internal arguments to propose major institutional reforms. It is only through this work that, after the law of civilization and the law of civilization, we can hope to see an "international law of civilizations".
