In this article I discuss one of the latest reports on the practice of drone warfare, the UN SRCT Drone Inquiry. I use the report to illustrate some of the specific forms of legal politics that surround drone warfare today. In the first place, I focus on the tension between the capacity of drones to target more precisely and the never-ending critique that drone warfare victimizes civilian populations. Secondly, I focus on the call for more objective legal rules that can be found in many debates on drone warfare.

An alleged ‘return to religion’ in contemporary western politics (and science) prompted the Trustees of the Hans Kelsen Institut to posthumously publish Kelsen’s critique of the concept of ‘secular religion’ advanced by his early student Eric Voegelin. This paper identifies, firstly, what concept of transcendence is targeted by Kelsen, and argues that his analysis leaves scope for other conceptions. It does so in two steps: it summarizes the arguments against ‘secular religion’ (section 2) and it gives an account of the differences between Voegelin’s and Schmitt’s conception of transcendence – both under attack from Kelsen (section 3). It then submits an alternative account of the relationship between politics and religion in Modernity, building on the concept of a ‘civil religion’ as found in Rousseau’s Social Contract. Giving a Rousseauist slant to Claude Lefort’s analysis of political theology (section 4) it concludes that a thin concept of transcendence is part and parcel of every, in particular a democratic, account of politics. It should be a stronghold against any resurgence of religion that feeds on hypostatized transcendence. In closing (section 5), it is argued that two key concepts in Kelsen’s legal philosophy may well be understood as paradigms of thin transcendence, namely ‘the people’ and ‘the Grundnorm’.

International criminal courts have made an important contribution to the development of international criminal law. Through case law, the courts have fine-tuned and modernized outdated concepts of international crimes and liability theories. In studying this practice, scholars have so far focused on the judicial interpretation of statutory and customary rules, thereby paying little attention to the rules’ application in individual cases. In this article, I reveal the limitations of this approach and illustrate how insights from casuistry can advance international criminal law discourse. In particular, I use the example of genocide to show that casuistic case law analyses can help scholars clarify the meaning of the law and appraise the application of substantive legal concepts in individual cases. Based on these observations, I argue that scholars should complement their current research with studies into the casuistry of international criminal law.

In dit artikel argumenteer ik dat er twee mogelijke invullingen zijn voor het principe van constituerende macht. De eerste mogelijkheid is deze van de klassieke basisveronderstelling van de constitutionele democratie, namelijk dat de gemeenschap zelf vorm kan en moet geven aan de fundamentele regels die die gemeenschap beheersen. Hans Lindahl maakt een interessante analyse van deze traditionele invulling, die ik kritisch zal benaderen. Lindahl heeft immers zelf scherpe kritiek op de invulling die Antonio Negri aan het concept constituerende macht geeft. Mijn interpretatie gaat er echter van uit dat Negri een fundamenteel andere inhoud geeft aan het principe van constituerende macht, waarbij constituerende macht niet alleen wordt losgemaakt van het constitutionalisme, maar meer algemeen van elk rechtssysteem en zelfs van elke vorm van finaliteit. Deze argumentatie werpt een nieuw licht op het debat rond Negri’s theorie van constituerende macht, waarin diens meest fundamentele uitgangspunt vaak over het hoofd wordt gezien.