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Power Shifts In International Law: Structural Realignment And Substantive Pluralism, William W. Burke-White
Power Shifts In International Law: Structural Realignment And Substantive Pluralism, William W. Burke-White
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For most of the past sixty years, the United States and Europe have led, independently and collectively, the international legal system. Yet, the rise of the BRICs over the past decade has caused a profound transformation of global politics. This paper examines the implications of this redistribution of power for international law. While international lawyers have long debated the ability of law to constrain state behavior, this paper shifts the debate from the power of law to the role of power within international law. It first advances a structural argument that the diffusion, disaggregation, and issue-specific asymmetries in the distribution …