Chapter 2 explores how Etienne Wenger’s theory of communities of practice translates to the context of international law and the concept of a special regime. According to Wenger, a community of practice is defined by the presence of three structural elements: there must be a mutual engagement of community members; community members must be engaged in a joint enterprise; and they must have a shared repertoire. Chapter 2 draws up the contours of a methodology that will help the classically trained legal scholar to justify propositions categorizing segments of the international legal system as special regimes, based on the idealist’s conception of a special regime. As the chapter demonstrates, the task needed to justify a suggestion that some subpart of the international legal system is a special regime is not significantly different from many investigations that classically trained legal scholars are already conducting, more or less as a matter of course.

A special regime is a subpart of the international legal system. This is why, in international legal discourse, there are several different conceptions of a special regime. For the same reason as lawyers disagree about the proper definition of the concept of international law, not only do they have different conceptions of an international legal system but they also assume different definitions of the concept of a special regime. There are considerable differences among the different conceptions of a special regime. This observation raises questions about their relative utility. Chapter 1 suggests the adoption of the conception that characterizes special regimes as communities of practice – as it helps to manage and control the effect of legal fragmentation compared to other conceptions.