The state’s unabandoned claim to be the center of the legal universe

Abstract

Since the period following World War I, the science of international law has endeavored to “relativize” the importance and role of the “sovereign state” in international law, understanding the state as a partial legal order in the framework of a universal legal order. However, until today positive international law hardly reflects that transformation. Instead, it has perpetuated the centrality of the sovereign state in the world of law. The present article points to a number of features concerning the legal relationships between that state and other legal communities, both subnational and supranational, in which the continued central role of the state is manifesting itself. The article concludes by reflecting on possible reasons accounting for the center stage still assumed by the sovereign state, in spite of developments like the expansion of the scope of international law or the growth of international institutions.