The international legal system today is confronting unprecedented
assertions of national authority, growing disparities in wealth
and power, and new crises of legitimacy. These challenges raise
profound questions for lawyers and scholars in both the public
and private spheres of international affairs: Do we need new international
rules and institutions to meet these new challenges, or must existing
rules and institutions yield to the realities of national power?
Do we need to refine the international legal system to recognize
revolutionary as well as evolutionary developments? Is international
law reaching the limits of its ability to provide a framework
for a stable and just world order? If so, what are the consequences?
The questions that follow provide examples of the tension between
the competing visions of a new world order and a world in disorder:
With actual disparities of
power, resources, and capacity to generate and enforce legal
rules among states now greater than ever, are we entering an
Orwellian age, where some states are more equal than others
and where the weak are expected to abide by the rules, but the
powerful may choose to disregard them?
Why do some international
regimes and intergovernmental organizations operate with robust
rules, strong enforcement mechanisms, and active constituencies
while others are weak or languish in relative obscurity? Why
do some international rules penetrate more deeply into national
legal systems than others? Why does international law succeed
in modifying behavior in some spheres, but play only a marginal
role in others?
What role do powerful private
actors like multinational corporations and nongovernmental organizations
have in the international legal system? What regulatory regimes
should govern their conduct? Should private actors be empowered
to act in the public sphere?
·Are the classical sources
of international law—treaties, customary law and general
principles—being supplanted by forms of soft law such
as nonbinding agreements, resolutions of international organizations,
and recommendations?
