What is so Special about the Special Regimes? – International Legal Discretion as Litmus Test

In this Project, we will engage in new ways with a fundamental issue of international legal structure. We will draw on the combined expertise of three legal researchers and two universities (Lund and Leiden), both of which have an established international reputation for conducting high quality research on precisely such issues. We will seek to establish whether the exercise of discretion within five distinct areas of international law can serve as a basis, from which the defining features of the concept of a special regime in international law can be reconstructed. For the purpose of this assignment, we will conceive of a special regime as a community of practice – not as a collection of rules, which has hitherto been the prevailing conception. The outcome of the Project, as envisaged, will allow the development of a general theory of the identity of special regimes. It will enable constructive discussion on how an increasingly specialised and diversified international law can be combined with the fundamental idea of international law as a single legal system. More fundamentally, the outcome of the Project will shed light on the conditions for the co-existence of a legal system and its various branches, as well as on the ontology and significance of disciplinary boundaries in law, generally, including the law of Sweden.