International Humanitarian Law Commons^™

Panel Discussion, Professor Jonathan Charney, Professor Thomas Franck, Professor Jordan Paust, Professor John Murphy, Geoffrey Levitt, Professor Kenneth Abbott, Professor Robert Friedlander, Professor Alberto Coll, Professor Jerome Reichman

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Kelsen, in his writings, took the position that in law, particularly international law, there are superior and inferior limits to the law; that is, when a norm is articulated and the society behaves in conformance with the norm, and it would do so even in the absence of the norm, the norm is not serving a legal function; it is not serving a normative function of encouraging behavior because the behavior would be in conformance with that norm in any event. There's also the inferior limit to the law; that is, a situation where a rule is articulated but the …