Abstract
Customarily one begins a discussion about the effectiveness of international law by quoting Louis Henkin’s famous remark that “almost all nations obey almost all principles of international law and almost all of their obligations almost all of the time.” For some, this empirical claim supports the notion that international law is a vital tool for furthering international cooperation across a broad range of issue areas. For others, the implicit suggestion that international law’s mere existence might be driving states’ behavior is a calamity of causal inference. Even if Henkin’s claim is empirically correct, effectiveness does not follow from compliance. For a third group, Henkin’s claim may not even be empirically correct. In at least some areas of international law, noncompliance may be relatively high. Deploying the same suspect causal reasoning that the second group worries about, international law skeptics have sometimes suggested that we might infer ineffectiveness on the basis of such noncompliance.
Highlights
Editor’s note: The following is the first contribution to an AJIL Unbound symposium[1] on “The Idea of Effective International Law,” a continuation of the panel discussion[2] at the 2014 ASIL-ILA joint meeting in Washington, DC
In this essay, based on my remarks at the 2014 ASIL-ILA joint meeting panel titled “The Idea of Effective International Law,” I argue that an excessive focus on compliance may understate international law’s effectiveness for at least two reasons
International law can be highly effective at changing state behavior over time, even if compliance with legal standards remains low
Summary
Editor’s note: The following is the first contribution to an AJIL Unbound symposium[1] on “The Idea of Effective International Law,” a continuation of the panel discussion[2] at the 2014 ASIL-ILA joint meeting in Washington, DC. One begins a discussion about the effectiveness of international law by quoting Louis Henkin’s famous remark[3] that “almost all nations obey almost all principles of international law and almost all of their obligations almost all of the time.”. This empirical claim supports the notion that international law is a vital tool for furthering international cooperation across a broad range of issue areas. International law can be highly effective at changing state behavior over time, even if compliance with legal standards remains low. Noncompliance, in other words, has benefits in terms of encouraging changes in state behavior
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