V Methodology and Theory, 40 Doctrine versus State Practice

What the editors had in mind when drafting the subject of ‘doctrine versus state practice’ as a chapter of Part V of the Handbook on ‘Methodology and Theory’ was first and foremost the age-old question of how much attention somebody writing the history of international law should devote to doctrine on the one hand (that is, a description of what international legal scholars wrote in the past), and state practice on the other hand. Nussbaum, for instance, addressed that problem in the foreword to his A Concise History of the Law of Nations,1 and so did Grewe in his...