ABSTRACT
This chapter models the quality of scholarly training that is at the regenerative heart of ‘international law and the humanities’. As the contributors to this chapter show, such a training is about more than intellectual development: it is about how to conduct oneself as a scholar of law, with a sense of care for the law, which is also to say, for others. Such a training is about respect, and love, as much as protocol and doctrine; a responsiveness to the ever-changing faces of the law, as much as a determined attention to the histories, traditions, canons and practices without which there would be nothing new. It is about the teacher as master, as much as teachers as students. Like the law, this chapter began with one intention, before taking on new meaning. The intention was for Peter Fitzpatrick to contribute a sole-authored chapter reflecting his learning in, and contributions to, the field of international law. Since that commission, Peter was diagnosed with cancer, and on the eve of submitting the manuscript, he left us. In the spirit of generosity that suffused his life, Peter offered the fragment that he had already written. Like law, like life, this fragment is ‘unfinished’, a beginning without end; and like law, like life, it is a work that can only ever be fulfilled in community. To this ‘end’ we invited four of Peter’s students, who are now each themselves teachers, to respond to his fragment. The result, we believe, is a window into the training in conduct that continues to be one of Peter’s greatest gifts to us all.
