Anarchy and International Law: The Approaches of Hedley Bull and Noam Chomsky

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Are and the law antithetical? Not so, as for more than 350 years international law has governed a legal order based on anarchy; wherein no central authority exists and law functions not on the basis of coercion but on cooperation whereby States must agree to each specific laws before it is bound by its obligations. This article contemplates two manners in which an anarchist might consider international law interesting: first, as a legal system which governs an anarchical society as described by Hedley Bull in line with the English School of International Relations; and second, as a manifestation of a State system which, though illegitimate can be utilized, as Noam Chomsky does, for tactical reasons to demonstrate its inconsistencies and thus weakening the system with the ultimate aim being its implosion.Keywords: international law; anarchy; Hedley Bull; Noam Chomsky; international relations; governanceBeyond the pejorative, anarchism - if considered at all - is seen as being antithetical to the Statist system and that which regulates it: international law. While scholars of international law have shied away from labeling it as such, the international legal order, lacking as it does central law creating, determining, and enforcement mechanisms, and being based on cooperation as opposed to coercion, is quintessentially anarchistic. This understanding, it should be noted, has not escaped theorist of international relations; in fact, it is the opposite. As Hedley Bull relates, whereas men within each state are subject to a common government, sovereign states in their mutual are not. This it is possible to regard as the central fact of international life and the starting-point of theorizing about it.1 This anarchy problematique continues to this day to play its part in seeking to understand the manner in which international functions in the absence of a central government and the manner in which cooperation manifests itself within an anarchical framework. Yet, this fundamental discussion finds little or no place in the discourse of international law, where more often than not is the pedestrian synonym of disorder; this, at the expense of its theoretical understanding as an international society based on cooperation, void of central authority.That international legal scholars think of the international society as being anarchistic is rather rare. Anthony Clark Arend explains the gap between international theory and international law:Many international legal texts begin with a discussion of the 'sources' of international law - the ways in which legal rules are created. These works immediately delve into the international legislative process without first taking into account the nature of the international system itself. This approach is undoubtedly troubling to many international theorists. For them, it would seem impossible to understand how rules are produced unless the larger framework of international affairs is fully discussed. [...]In fairness to international legal scholars, this failure to explore deeply the nature of the international system may be due less to a lack of rigor than to a long tradition of shared assumptions among legal scholars about the nature of the system.2Manifestations of these shared assumptions are to be found, for instance, in Antonio Cassese's text book, wherein he writes of the relations between the States comprising the international community remains largely horizontal. While acknowledging cooperation in an era of globalisation has meant the development transnational institutions, Cassese notes that [Relative still prevails at the level of central management,3 though it is unclear by the wording or context whether Cassese is speaking of in the pejorative sense or not. Thus shared assumptions mean that Anthony D'Amato can speak of in the pejorative - Anarchy could bring down the demise of the ILS [international legal order] - rather than as the very basis of that international legal order. …