Practice, Craft and Ethos: Inheriting a Tradition

Abstract

<p>This chapter introduces the Handbook. It begins by describing two overlapping traditions of handbook writing, identified for heuristic purposes as the ‘encyclopaedic’ and ‘technical’ traditions. The chapter gestures to the entangled traditions of thought in the humanistic study of law that these traditions carry, and the ways in which this Handbook takes up an inheritance of those traditions. The aim is to draw attention to the relationship between styles of handbooks, traditions of transmission and instruction, and accounts of authority, knowledge and law. The chapter describes the Handbook’s horizon as being set more by the traditions of instructional writing which cleave to the craftsperson’s manual, than by an ambition to produce an authoritative guide to a jurisprudential field. It describes how the 36 works of scholarship that have been drawn together each exemplify the practice, craft and ethos of ‘international law and the humanities’, and how the Handbook as a whole might serve as a basis for training and inspiration.<br></p>