The 2015 ESIL Book Prize was awarded to Dr. Monica Garcia-Salmones Rovira (Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights at the University of Helsinki) for her book The Project of Positivism in International Law, published by Oxford University Press.

The jury members were Andrea Bianchi (Graduate Institute, Geneva), Gerhard Hafner (University of Vienna) and Susan Marks (London School of Economics and Political Science). The jury explained their decision as follows:

“This book retells the story of positivism in international law in a way that profoundly challenges received understanding of the history of international legal positivism, the key protagonists in that history, and the nature of the political project involved. We have awarded the 2015 ESIL Book Prize to this book because of its ambition and erudition, and because of the boldness and significance of its argument. Persuaded or not, no one attempting to get the measure of international law as a discipline will in the future be able to ignore Dr Garcia-Salmones Rovira’s contention that the legacy of positivism has been an ‘economic’ conception of international law that rules out in advance the possibility of a common good, a collective life, and a universal law beyond the horizon of administration, adjudication and methodological individualism.”

The Prize was awarded during the conference dinner at the ESIL 11th Annual Conference in Oslo in September 2015.