Let’s not argue: diplomatic legal talk and the issues of abortion and same-sex partnerships

How does legal talk matter and how it is used in diplomatic practice? International law’s inherent openness to interpretation is an opportunity for states to shape it to their advantage through argumentation, a well-studied type of legal rhetoric. In this article, I investigate another avenue: legal openness can also be used in a way that actively maintains and reproduces it through ambiguous discourse, in a way that is consequential for the emergence (or lack thereof) of international norms and for the quality of relations between states. This article puts scholarship on international law in conversation with practice theory and diplomatic theory by arguing that international legal practice, including legal talk, depends on the logic of practicality of those who practice it. The article develops a theoretical framework of discursive uses of international law and employs it to the study of engagement of progressive states on the issues of abortion and same-sex partnerships in Poland. I conclude that diplomats construct ambiguity about their countries’ positions on how human rights square with the principle of non-interference. Consequently, international law is found as a discursive resource not only for argumentation in the interest of statecraft but also for maintenance of ambiguity in the interest of co-existence. Interestingly, these findings from a bilateral site stand in contrast with argumentative legal practice used in multilateral fora.