Between Hope and Constraint: The Fragile Ambition of Reconstructing International Law

Abstract

This article examines the ‘fragile ambition’ at the heart of current efforts to reconstruct international law. The issue was brought to the forefront at the 2025 European Society of International Law’s Annual Conference amid widening geopolitical tension and declining institutional confidence. The article argues that this ambition reflects a renewed scholarly impulse to revive international law’s normative imagination. Yet it is persistently constrained by structural inertia, political gloom, cultural distance, language barriers and the weight of historical inscriptions. The analysis presents ‘fragile ambition’ as a condition shaped by the discipline’s internal epistemic, professional and institutional boundaries. The discussion situates this tension within broader debates on international law’s reformability and emphasizes that meaningful regeneration requires more than doctrinal innovation. It relies on the academic community’s sustained practices of critical dialogue, shared commitment and collective meaning making. The article offers a framework that explains why international law struggles to regenerate itself and shows how fragility, rather than weakness, can serve as a productive site for scholarly engagement and normative reconstruction.