Walking Down Memory Lane on the 50th Anniversary of YJIL
The New Haven School of International Law
"We refer to the New Haven Approach because there exists a group of scholars that have self-consciously elected to guide their studies by an application of the framework of inquiry as it has been outlined in the principal methodological efforts of Professors McDougal and Lasswell. The coordination of inquiry around a common methodology, if significant, lead, to the development of 'a school,' an approach to the study or treatment of a subject-matter that is a significant event in the history of the subject. Schools of painting and of philosophy come to mind as principled illustrations of the flowering of an approach at a given time and place. 'The Vienna Circle,' 'The Cambridge Platonists,' and 'The Prague Circle' (of linguistics) are among the examples that come to mind. By referring to the work inspired by McDougal and Lasswell as 'The New Haven Approach' I am presuming both to acknowledge and to hasten the acknowledgment of this body of work as distinct and as historically significant in the development of international legal studies."
Richard A. Falk, On Treaty Interpretation and the New Haven Approach: Achievements and Prospects, 8 Va. J. Int'l L. 323 (1968)
The New Haven School describes a perspective to international law that primarily analyzes international law through the lens of public policy. In contrast to the more positivist perspectives on international law which preceded it, The New Haven School prioritizes sociological jurisprudence and aims to recognize and balance both internationally shared values and cultural and national diversity. As its name suggests, this approach initially arose among scholars of international law at Yale Law School, with the Yale Journal of International Law playing a significant role as a forum for its development over the past 50 years.
The prehistory of the New Haven School lies in a 1943 article co-authored by Myres S. McDougal and Harold D. Lasswell which argued anew for a synthesis of law and policy in legal education. The article built on the rise of legal realism in American law and advocated for a shift in legal education that reflected the turn away from the legal positivism of John Austin and other 19th-century legal philosophers. For McDougal and Lasswell, law was not merely a social fact, but it was an extension of politics and should be exercised as such to advance society.
In the wake of the First World War, of the collapse of the existing regime of international law, and of the growing threat in Interwar Europe to its revitalization, McDougal and Lasswell began to incorporate their approach into the way they taught and wrote about international law, arguing anew for a synthesis of law and policy. By 1968, scholars such as Richard A. Falk had recognized how this realist approach to international law that was developing in New Haven, at Yale, was broadly influencing thought about international law.
This approach to legal education both inherited and continued an existing legacy of the Yale Law School. In a 1966 column in the New York Times comparing the law schools at Harvard and Yale, Victor S. Navasky wrote in the New York Times of how [Harvard is for practitioners, Yale for thinkers] and cited both McDougal and Lasswell as exemplars of the Yale method of legal instruction.
By the 1960s, a generation of students had coalesced around this policy-oriented approach, with their scholarship and work starting to be referred to, both internally and externally, as the New Haven School. One of those students was W. Michael Reisman, who became a standard-bearer for the New Haven School in the latter half of the 20th century. In 1981, McDougal and Reisman co-authored the textbook International Law in Contemporary Perspective, which outlined principals of international law in the mold of the New Haven School. In addition, they edited a supplement to the textbook which compiled a dozen articles instrumental to the early development of the School.
In 2007, the Journal hosted a symposium entitled The 'New' New Haven School: International Law—Past, Present & Future, which assessed the first half century of the legacy and influence of New Haven scholarship and looked forward to the next century. Though the New Haven School began at Yale and has been fostered by the Yale Journal of International Law, in testimony to its global influence and emergence as a significant voice in the international legal community, its history and development has itself become a subject of study by scholars of intellectual and legal history, as evidenced by the 2019 dissertation by Ríán Tuathal Derrig, soon to be edited for publication with Oxford University Press.
Exhibit Items and Resources
Victor S. Harvey, The Yales vs. The Harvards (Legal Division), N.Y. Times, Sep. 11, 1966, at 143 (requires subscription)
Oona A. Hathaway, The Continuing Influence of the New Haven School, 32 Yale J. Int'l L. 553 (2007)
Myres S. McDougal, W. Michael Reisman, International Law Essays (1981)