In 1990, when the European Journal of International Law (EJIL) had its first issue, its founders, including myself, obviously stressed in their first editorial the link between international law and the construction of the European Union. The socio-political context in which the Journal had just been launched was very different from that which prevails today.

  The international legal system established in 1945 can be seen, in its very design, as an incarnation of western rationalism.  Like that rationalism, it implicitly embodies a certain ideology of progress. In terms of its philosophical underpinnings, it would seem to be heir to the philosophy of the Enlightenment and the Aufkärung despite the fact that a…