Humanisation and the normative evolution of international society

This thesis concentrates on the ‘Humanisation’ of international law. The headline claim of Humanisation is that the realisation of individual subjectivity into the international legal order has shifted the normative foundations of international society from a focus on state security to a focus on human security. This thesis seeks to explore the analytical verifiability and normative desirability of this claim. In its course, it disputes claims of a paradigm shift and related claims of a humanised hierarchy altering the international legal order as traditionally conceived. Rather, it restates the foundational role of state sovereignty and horizontality to the international legal order. It does so by exploring how the claims which Humanisation has made thus far may be reinterpreted through broader forms of international political theory, in particular the recent ‘practice turn’