The Future Of The International Legal System

Abstract

Abstract The preceding chapters of this book have attempted to present several basic propositions about international legal rules in the contemporary international system. First, I have contended that international legal rules are distinctive; they are perceived by the decision-making elites in states to be qualitatively different from other types of rules. Second, I have argued that these legal rules are created by states through their consent. As a consequence, I have developed a methodology for determining when that consent has been given. Third, I have sought to demonstrate that legal rules matter-that they play a critical role in international politics. All these propositions are based on the assumption that the international system remains essentially as it has been for the past several hundred years-an anarchic system in which states are the primary actors. But, as noted in the introduction to this book, the international system has been subjected to unprecedented developments since the end of the cold war. I believe that the fundamental nature of this system has not yet changed. It is stilI a system of sovereign states. Nonetheless, the trajectory of some of these recent developments could indeed indicate that the future-indeed perhaps the very near future may hold such fundamental systemic changes.