The Philosophy of International Aviation Law

Abstract

“International Air Law” has been justifiably arrested in a straight-jacketed approach centred on the classical doctrines of state sovereignty and sources, which is in addition to a limiting classicism in IAL’s discourses, methods, and meanings. This Article problematizes the said classicism on account of it distancing, and often dissociating, IAL from the global realities in civil aviation. It proposes an alternative approach to read IAL including rechristening it as “International Aviation Law,”, a new epistemological and disciplinary category, which has a modernist approach, and which stays close to the reality of functions in civil aviation. In making a case for IAvL, the Article primarily draws on many renewalist and radical thinking in international law and elsewhere mindful of the prevailing global and economic realities. Motivated by the same, the Article lets orthodoxies to fall for making ground for an epistemological revolution in the regulation of civil aviation. The Article organizes its critique and construction under four major heads: Sovereignty, Sources, Subjects, and Meanings.