Law Without Nations? Why Constitutional Government Requires Sovereign States

Abstract

Law Without Nations? Why Constitutional Government Requires Sovereign States. By Jeremy A. Rabkin. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 350p. $29.95.Many people complain that American foreign policy is self-interested, unilateralist, and brutish, and wish that the United States would participate more enthusiastically in multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and the Kyoto Treaty. Defenders of American foreign policy argue that these institutions just do not serve America's interest. Jeremy Rabkin offers an alternative version of this argument: He says that yielding sovereignty to global institutions violates America's constitutional traditions, and the attractive mixture of freedom and security that these traditions support. Global governance is bureaucratic, insensitive to democratic pressures, and indifferent to local variation in values and interests. Further, liberty requires the rule of law, and the rule of law can prevail only in a sovereign state. Global governance undermines sovereignty and thus undermines the rule of law and freedom as well.