International law in the round

International law and lawyers are quite against circular things. The circular argument or tautology haunts us as we attempt to break out of the endless round-and-round of a legal argument through the progressive straight-lines of the logical syllogism. ‘If’ and ‘then’ at least get us moving along at a regular pace; ‘and’ and ‘but’ are cul-de-sacs that keep us locked in the same endless loop. In courtrooms, international fora, academic conferences, the ‘circuitous’ argument or justification or paper is derided as, at best, half-baked, and at worst, intentionally meandering. To be circuitous, after all, is to be deviant in some way, to deviate from the normal path.