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Full-Text Articles in Law
Softness In International Law: A Self-Serving Quest For New Legal Materials: A Reply To Jean D’Aspremont,, Anthony D'Amato
Softness In International Law: A Self-Serving Quest For New Legal Materials: A Reply To Jean D’Aspremont,, Anthony D'Amato
Faculty Working Papers
As international law grows and spreads into non-traditional areas such as the international ecosystem, the global economy, and human rights, some say it is becoming fragmented. This notion can actually appeal to those scholars who want to become experts in a fragment without having the burden of connecting it to the rest of international law. Another group views the idea of isolated specialization with apprehension; they feel that international law is and must be a coherent set of principles and rules—coherent in the sense that no member of the set contradicts any other member. The burden of resolving the tension …
The Coerciveness Of International Law, Anthony D'Amato
The Coerciveness Of International Law, Anthony D'Amato
Faculty Working Papers
This article shows that an important part of the deep structure of international law is its self-referential strategy of employing its own rules to protect its rules. International law tolerates a principled violation of its own rules when necessary to keep other rules from being broken. It extends a legal privilege to states to use coercion against any state that has selfishly attempted to transgress its international obligations. International law thus protects itself through the opportunistic deployment of its own rules.
Is International Law Coercive?, Anthony D'Amato
Is International Law Coercive?, Anthony D'Amato
Faculty Working Papers
Can international law be enforced against a state? Against a superpower? Various current theories answer in the negative: dualism, consent, domestication, soft law, the New Haven school, and exceptionalism. But this Article claims that international law is enforced all the time by unilateral or multilateral reprisals. The stability of international law over time is a function of the successful working of the reprisal system. In sum, international law is a coercive order.
Why Is International Law Binding?, Anthony D'Amato
Why Is International Law Binding?, Anthony D'Amato
Faculty Working Papers
Many writers believe that international law is precatory but not "binding" in the way domestic law is binding. Since international law derives from the practice of states, how is it that what states do becomes what they must do? How do we get bindingness or normativity out of empirical fact? We have to avoid the Humean fallacy of attempting to derive an ought from an is. Yet we can find in nature at least one norm that is compelling: the norm of survival. This norm is hardwired into our brains through evolution. It is also hardwired into the international legal …