ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the commodity form theory of law as that which has offered a persuasive critical account of the form of law itself. The ambiguous promise of law is rooted in the very foundations of Western legal theory that root law in conceptions of justice and, simultaneously, in existing social power structures. Law can be conceived of as norms that derive from a concept of ‘right’, ‘justice’, or the ‘ought’ of social life. Such conceptions form the basis of divine or natural law. Conventional responses to this ambivalence of law have tended to approach international law through a series of common assumptions, all of which serve in some way to reinforce that ambiguity present in law that enables the simultaneous vision of it as both progressive and emancipatory and conservative and oppressive. The first movement just noted was one of the key components in the ‘New Stream’ of international legal theory.
