(International) Law as Inter-legality

The article aims to account for international law as partaking in the transformation of law as inter-legality. The authors show that thinking in terms of domestic law and international law, whether hermetically sealed off or in Kelsenian monist terms, makes little sense anymore, since both international law and domestic law have become inter- legality. By focusing on judicial reasoning, the article first provides for an illustration of how inter-legality was pioneered. Environment, economy, human rights and trade are the domains where most inter-legality is seen at work as an enlightening notion. Inter- legality is embraced in the analysis as material interconnectedness overcoming the legal closure of discrete orders. Such notion is distinguished from other influential ones. The essay points out that inter-legality can also have a normative function for a better explanation, understanding and managing of the present transformations of law. Inter-legality needs a corresponding attitude and reasoning, based on carefully pondering claims sourced from concurring/conflicting legalities, in order not to take a one-sided course, one which would leave unexplored or unconsidered the possible rightness (or wrongness) and contribution to justice from the different perspectives of other separate legal regimes, equally involved.