Law Commons^™

Soft And Hard Strategies: The Role Of Business In The Crafting Of International Commercial Law, Susan Block-Lieb

Faculty Scholarship

Part I returns to the classic definition of hard international law initially put forward by Kenneth Abbott and Duncan Snidal and related IR scholars and analyzes existing commercial law treaties in light of this definition. It concludes that virtually none of these commercial law treaties constitute “hard” international law because nearly all commercial law treaties rely on national courts for enforcement. But Abbott and Snidal’s focus on the extent to which international law is legalized—and especially the extent to which it is enforced by international actors—may matter less with commercial than other more public international lawmaking. This is because the …