Introduction: Contested Fundamentals of the Law of International Organizations: Repositioning Legal Theory

In 2020, Jan Klabbers and Guy Fiti Sinclair opened a Symposium of the European Journal of International Law by claiming that “international organizations law is one of those fields of international law where theorization by lawyers has been kept to a minimum”.1 Judging by the reactions of legal academics, especially early career researchers, their call was not left unanswered. In just two years, international organizations have been the object of several interdisciplinary studies adopting different perspectives and tools to discuss the uses of legal expertise. Socio-legal, historical, and ethnographic studies are redefining the ways in which to look at international organizations.2 International organizations appear to be the ideal arena in which to perform archival research, interviews, textual analysis, or have a direct working experience to study the ‘law in action’ under intriguing and enriching perspectives. By contrast, it appears that doctrinal research on the law of international organizations is not keeping the pace with this renewed interest and is getting marginalized by both academia and practitioners. For the former, it is