Law Commons^™

Soft Law As Delegation, Timothy L. Meyer

Scholarly Works

This article examines one of the most important trends in international legal governance since the end of the Second World War: the rise of "soft law," or legally non-binding instruments. Scholars studying the design of international agreements have long puzzled over why states use soft law. The decision to make an agreement or obligation legally binding is within the control of the states negotiating the content of the legal obligations. Basic contract theory predicts that parties to a contract would want their agreement to be as credible as possible, to ensure optimal incentives to perform. It is therefore odd that …

Soft Law As Delegation, Timothy Meyer

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article examines one of the most important trends in international legal governance since the end of the Second World War: the rise of "soft law," or legally non-binding instruments. Scholars studying the design of international agreements have long puzzled over why states use soft law. The decision to make an agreement or obligation legally binding is within the control of the states negotiating the content of the legal obligations. Basic contract theory predicts that parties to a contract would want their agreement to be as credible as possible, to ensure optimal incentives to perform. It is therefore odd that …

Using International Dispute Resolution To Address The Compliance Question In International Law, Anna Spain

Publications

A fundamental critique of international law is that it fails to ensure compliance and, thus, has limited influence on state behavior. Existing compliance theories consider how interests, norms and legal process impact states. Within the legal process school, theories either narrowly define process as methods that achieve a legal aim or broadly consider diplomatic activities without connecting them to the structural elements of process. Thus, despite the prolific scholarship in this area, understanding of how an international dispute resolution process, such as the Six-Party Talks, influences state behavior, such as North Korea’s actions toward nuclear disarmament, remains limited.

To address …

International Law In Crisis: A Qualitative Empirical Contribution To The Compliance Debate, Michael P. Scharf

Faculty Publications

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 21, Professors Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner published The Limits of International Law, a potentially revolutionary book that employs rational choice theory to argue that international law is really just “politics” and does not render a “compliance pull” on State decisionmakers. Critics have pointed out that Goldsmith and Posner’s identification of the role of international law in each of their case studies is largely conjectural, and that what is needed is qualitative empirical data that identifies the international law-based arguments that were actually made and the policy-makers’ responses to such …

How International Law Works: A Response To Commentators, Andrew T. Guzman

Andrew T Guzman

This is a response to the discussion of commentators in a symposium on my book, How International Law Works.

How International Law Works: Introduction, Andrew T. Guzman

Andrew T Guzman

This comment serves as the introduction to a symposium on my book, How International Law Works.